Completely illiterate adults can learn to decode in 3 months

Kolinsky, Régine; Leite, Isabel Cristina de Moura; Carvalho, Cristina; Franco, Ana; Morais, José

doi:10.1007/s11145-017-9804-7

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…In sum, the present results fit best with the notion that learning to read enhances the efficiency of phonological name retrieval thereby improving RAN. Future research could usefully explore this further by looking at the effects of literacy longitudinally (for recent evidence, see Kolinsky, Leite, Carvalho, Franco, & Morais, ), by adopting for example random assignment of illiterate adults to literacy training.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to read facilitates the retrieval of phonological representations in rapid automatized naming: Evidence from unschooled illiterate, ex‐illiterate, and schooled literate adults

Araújo

Fernandes

Huettig

2019

Developmental Science

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Rapid automatized naming (RAN) of visual items is a powerful predictor of reading skills. However, the direction and locus of the association between RAN and reading is still largely unclear. Here, we investigated whether literacy acquisition directly bolsters RAN efficiency for objects, adopting a strong methodological design, by testing three groups of adults matched in age and socioeconomic variables, who differed only in literacy/schooling: unschooled illiterate and ex‐illiterate, and schooled literate adults. To investigate in a fine‐grained manner whether and how literacy facilitates lexical retrieval, we orthogonally manipulated the word‐form frequency (high vs. low) and phonological neighborhood density (dense vs. spare) of the objects' names. We observed that literacy experience enhances the automaticity with which visual stimuli (e.g., objects) can be retrieved and named: relative to readers (ex‐illiterate and literate), illiterate adults performed worse on RAN. Crucially, the group difference was exacerbated and significant only for those items that were of low frequency and from sparse neighborhoods. These results thus suggest that, regardless of schooling and age at which literacy was acquired, learning to read facilitates the access to and retrieval of phonological representations, especially of difficult lexical items.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning to read facilitates the retrieval of phonological representations in rapid automatized naming: Evidence from unschooled illiterate, ex‐illiterate, and schooled literate adults

Araújo

Fernandes

Huettig

2019

Developmental Science

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“…A separate but related issue relates to the open question of whether literacy only affects performance on tasks that require conscious manipulation of speech sounds and units (such as phoneme deletion and phonological fluency), or whether it also affects more implicit phonological processing involved in everyday language processing and learning, as discussed, for instance, by [50] and [51]. We return to this when discussing [52] below.…”

Section: Literacy And/or Schooling Effects On Phonological Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Illiterate participants in [48] could not read or write in a test including letters and simple words, whereas literate participants had 7-10 years of schooling. Finally, [52]'s study will be introduced below as having a pre-post design on the same participants, who before training had attended school irregularly 0-2 years. To simplify discussion, we collapse across illiterates, non-readers, zero years of schooling, and "before literacy training", but interested readers can inspect Table 1 for raw data on these separate categories.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among these studies, [52] is particularly relevant in terms of decorrelating literacy and schooling. [52] reports on a longitudinal study in which 8 previously illiterate adults received 14 weeks of reading training, and six of them learned how to read in this process.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is one more issue affecting the interpretation of most previous work. In nearly all previous studies, participants repeated both words and non-words mixed together (with the exception of [55], who blocked words and non-words in separate trials; and [52] who presented only non-words in this task). This may have caused confusion as participants concurrently perform a lexical decision task, which is meta-linguistic, and which may have interfered with the actual repetition.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

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Infant-directed input and literacy effects on phonological processing: Non-word repetition scores among the Tsimane’

et al. 2020

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Language input in childhood and literacy (and/or schooling) have been described as two key experiences impacting phonological processing. In this study, we assess phonological processing via a non-word repetition (NWR) group game, in adults and children living in two villages of an ethnic group where infants are rarely spoken to, and where literacy is variable. We found lower NWR scores than in previous work for both children (N = 17; aged 1-12 years) and adults (N = 13; aged 18-60 years), which is consistent with the hypothesis that there would be long-term effects on phonological processing of experiencing low levels of directed input in infancy. Additionally, we found some evidence that literacy and/or schooling increases NWR scores, although results should be interpreted with caution given the small sample size. These findings invite further investigations in similar communities, as current results are most compatible with phonological processing being influenced by aspects of language experience that vary greatly between and within populations.

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How to Teach Fully Illiterate Adults to Read

Kolinsky

Carvalho²,

Leite

et al. 2019

The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy

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About 750 million adults (15%) worldwide lack any literacy skills, most because they lack adequate learning opportunities (UNESCO, 2016). In this chapter, we discuss how to teach to read to such people. We first examine scientific evidence suggesting that literacy acquisition does not radically differ as a function of age of acquisition. We then discuss the data relevant for designing effective methods aimed at teaching literacy to fully illiterate adults. We argue that the available adult data confirm those relative to teaching methods and learning processes that have been gathered on literacy acquisition by children. On the basis of those works we propose principles that should underlie any method aiming at rapidly developing basic literacy skills. Lastly, we present evidence (Kolinsky, Leite, Carvalho, Franco, & Morais, submitted) suggesting that implementing these principles does indeed allow teaching illiterate adults to decode words and pseudo-words in a very short period of time.

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Completely illiterate adults can learn to decode in 3 months

Cited by 8 publications

References 32 publications

Learning to read facilitates the retrieval of phonological representations in rapid automatized naming: Evidence from unschooled illiterate, ex‐illiterate, and schooled literate adults

Learning to read facilitates the retrieval of phonological representations in rapid automatized naming: Evidence from unschooled illiterate, ex‐illiterate, and schooled literate adults

Infant-directed input and literacy effects on phonological processing: Non-word repetition scores among the Tsimane’

How to Teach Fully Illiterate Adults to Read

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