Poster #87 - Orthographic Processing and Children’s Word Reading Development

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Theories of reading development generally agree that, in addition to phonological decoding (Share, 1995), some kind of orthographic processing skill underlies the ability to learn to read words. However, there is a lack of clarity as to which aspect(s) of orthographic processing are key in reading development: specifically, whether this is orthographic knowledge and/or orthographic learning (Apel, Henbest, & Matherson, 2018). Whereas orthographic knowledge has been argued to reflect a child’s existing store of orthographic representations, orthographic learning is concerned with the ability to form these representations. In a longitudinal study of second and third grade students, we evaluate the relations between these two aspects of orthographic processing (knowledge vs learning) and word-reading outcomes.
Our sample consisted of 112 participants, 56 starting in Grade 2 (22 male, 34 female) and 56 in Grade 3 (29 male, 27 female). We report here on data collected primarily from two time points in a longitudinal study. The children in Grades 2 and 3 were 7.91 (SD = 0.29) years and 9.03 years (SD = 0.35), respectively, at Time 1 and they were 8.90 years (SD = 0.28) and 10.01 years (SD = 0.35) at Time 2, respectively. Measures of word reading included: word reading accuracy (Woodcock Word Identification, Woodcoack, 1998), word reading fluency (TOWRE, Torgesen, Wagner & Rashotte, 1999), and irregular word reading (Castles et al., 2009). Measures of orthographic knowledge included lexical and sublexcial tasks (Deacon, et al., 2012). Orthographic learning was assessed by asking children to read 15 stories out loud; each of these stories included four repetitions of a nonword. Following their reading of all of the stories, the children completed an orthographic learning choice task in which they were asked to choose the spelling for nonword that they read in the stories from a set of four nonwords. Children completed the orthographic choice task again two days later.
The results of our analyses show that variance captured by orthographic knowledge overlaps with that of word reading, to the point that they form a single latent word reading factor. In contrast, orthographic learning is distinctive from this factor. Further, structural equation modeling demonstrated that early orthographic learning was related to gains in word reading skill. Based on these findings, we suggest that dynamic orthographic learning capacity, rather than static orthographic knowledge, may be a specific component of orthographic processing that is responsible for word reading development (e.g., Share, 2007). We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of word reading development.

Authors

• Adrian Pasquarella, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Helene Deacon, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva Marinus, Macquarie Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author

• Talisa Tims, Dalhousie University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anne Castles, Macquarie Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author