The Impact of Phonological and Orthographic Processing on Reading Development in Russian Children

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Language, Communication

Abstract

Introduction
Reading is a complex cognitive skill that implies processing of both visual and linguistic information. At early stages of learning to read, children rely more on the phonological information, whereas more advanced readers tend to rely more on the orthographic information (Grainger et al. 2012, Ziegler et al. 2014). Rakhlin et al. (2019) studied young readers in Russian, a language with transparent orthography, and did not find evidence for the contribution of phonological processing in reading fluency. Presumably, the lack of effect was due to the lower complexity of the phonological processing task (Dorofeeva et al., 2019). The present study investigated whether both phonological and orthographic processing skills as well as age influence reading fluency in Russian speaking children.
Method
117 Russian monolingual children aged 6-12 years (grades 1-5) performed three behavioral tests. First, reading fluency (understood as the number of words read in one minute) was assessed by the Standardized Assessment of Reading Skills (Kornev, 1997). Second, the level of phonological processing was evaluated by the Sound Change Task (Dorofeeva et al., 2019). In there, participants were asked to replace a specific phoneme in an auditorily presented pseudoword with another given phoneme. Third, orthographic processing was assessed by the ​Rapid Automatized Naming of digits task (RAN; ​ Denckla & Rudel 1974​), in which we recorded the amount of time spent on naming 50 digits.
Results
Higher phonological awareness seems to be related to reading fluency: children who performed with 75-100% success in the Sound Change Task read on average 75-125 words per minute, whereas those who performed with 0-50% success in the test, read fewer than 50 words per minute. Faster performance in RAN demonstrated contribution in reading fluency as well. Reading fluency of over 75 words per minute was only found in children who completed the RAN test within 40 seconds. Finally, older children read faster than younger ones​: children’s reading fluency between 6 years and 10 years of age improved gradually from 25 to 100-125 words per minute. However, between 10 and 12 years, the average reading fluency tended to be the same. Linear regression analysis of the data was performed in R (Version 4.0.2) with lme4 packages. We discovered an association of the same significance (p < 0.001) between reading fluency and phonological processing, reading fluency and orthographic processing, as well as reading fluency and age .
Discussion
We showed that all the three factors, i.e. phonological skills, orthographic processing skills, and age predicted reading fluency in Russian for young readers. In line with the study by Rakhlin et al. (2019), we claim that orthographic processing predicts reading in Russian. However, in contrast to them, we also claim a significant impact of phonological processing on reading fluency, which was probably found in our study due to the complexity of the task measuring phonological processing. Therefore, we can conclude that reading development in Russian speaking children is based on the development of both phonological and orthographic processing.

Authors

• Nina Zdorova, HSE University
  Presenting Author

• Anastasiia Kaprielova, Higher School of Economics
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anastasiya Lopukhina, HSE University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ksenia Victorovna Bartseva, Sirius University of Science and Technology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Olga Dmitrievna Vedenina, National Research University Higher School of Economics
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sofya Goldina, National Research University Higher School of Economics
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vladislava Staroverova, National Research University Higher School of Economics
  Non-Presenting Author

• Olga Dragoy, HSE University
  Non-Presenting Author