Phases of development in learning to read words by sight

Abstract

One of the great mysteries confronting literacy researchers is how mature readers are able to read written materials so rapidly and fluently yet with full comprehension (Adams, 1990; Barron, 1986; Chall, 1983;Perfetti, 1985; Rayner and' Pollatsek, 1989). A capability that has proven central in explaining this feat is the ability to read single words rapidly and automatically by sight (LaBerge and Samuels, 1974). Readers are able to look at a word and immediately recognize its meaning without expending any effort decoding the word. Moreover, sight of the word triggers recognition despite readers' intention to ignore the word (Guttentag and Haith, 1978). A major task for researchers has been to explain how beginners acquire the ability to recognize sight words rapidly and automatically.There are other ways that words might be read, but these are used mainly for words not known by sight (Ehri, 1991(Ehri, , 1994. Decoding or phonological recoding refers to the process of transforming graphemes into phonemes and blending the phonemes into pronunciations. Reading by analogy refers to the process of using known sight words to read unknown words that share letters, for example, reading BLIGHT by analogy to NIGHT (Cunningham, 1976;Goswami and Bryant, 1990;Marsh et al., 1981). Reading by predicting refers to the process of generating educated guesses about words based on context cues or initial letters or both (Goodman, 1976). Although these other means of reading words are available to readers, sight word reading is invoked the most because this process is fast and automatic.It is important to dispel misconceptions about sight word reading. It is not true that only irregularly spelled words are read by sight. Rather all words, even easily decoded.words, become sight words once they have been read several times. Also, it is not true that sight word reading refers to the flashcard method of teaching students to read words. Sight word reading refers not to a method of teaching reading but to the process of reading words by accessing them in memory (Ehri, 1992). Another misconception is that sight word learning involves memorizing the shapes of words or other visual features and has nothing to do with letter-sound correspondences. This is not true. The research we have conducted over the years 0 United Kingdom Reading Association 1995. Published by Blackwell Publishers, . Beginners need some decoding skill to read words by analogy. Reading Research Quarterly, 27, 12-26. EHRI, L. c . , and WILCE, L. s. (1982). The salience of silent letters in children's memory for word spellings. , 10, 155-166. EHRI. L. c . , and WILCE, L. s. (1983). Development of word identification speed in skilled and less skilled beginning readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75, 3-1 8 . EHRI, L. c.. and WILCE, L. s. (1985). Movement into reading: Is the first stage of printed word learning visual or phonetic? Memory and Cognition

The influence of reading unit size on the development of Stroop interference in early word decoding

“…According to the small-units first view, the earliest phonological unit involved in early reading is the phoneme, particularly because children are introduced to print, either informally, by being exposed to letter names (which generally carry their letter sounds), or formally by learning letter-sound correspondences (Duncan, Seymour, & Hill, 1997;Ehri, 1995;Stuart & Coltheart, 1988). These then give way to larger units as children become more proficient at recognizing positional, morphemic, and other context-sensitive sublexical units that become inferred from the lexicon and consolidated as units with growing expertise (Ehri, 1997).…”

Escritura y lectura: hecho social, no natural

“…Según Ehri (1995Ehri ( , 2006, las explicaciones basadas en el aprendizaje previo de las configuraciones visuales de las palabras para reconocerlas a través de la ruta léxica es insuficiente, porque recordar la forma ortográfica de cada palabra nueva que se adquiere de forma arbitraria plantea grandes exigencias en la memoria. En su opinión, es más plausible la hipótesis de que una vez que el niño y la niña han tenido conocimientos de las conexiones entre grafemas y fonemas, utilizarán estas claves para acceder a la representación ortográfica de la palabra almacenada en su memoria.…”

Effects of Orthographic, Morphological and Semantic Overlap on Short-Term Memory for Words in Typical and Atypical Development

“…"Decoding first" accounts (Ehri, 1995;Ehri et al, 2013;Nunes et al, 1997b) predict that younger children will show only effects of orthographic/phonological processing, whereas effects of morphological and semantic processing will emerge later in development. In contrast, some theoretical accounts might argue that even novice readers will be sensitive to morphological overlap (Deacon, Conrad, et al, 2008;Treiman & Bourassa, 2000;Treiman & Cassar, 1996).…”