Reading Disability: The Role ofLanguage Deficiencies*

Virginia A. Mannt and Susan Bradytt

Learning to read presents a considerable obstacle for approximately 4-10% ofnormal elementary school children, despite what would appear to be afavorable background of intellectual abilities and classroom experience. Such"reading disability" hinders educational progress and, as a consequence, caneffect $elf~esteem, social status, and occupational choice. Some important newdiscoveries are showing that many instances of reading disability are rooted insome problem in the language domain (for recent reviews, see: Liberman, 1982;Mann, 1986a; Perfetti, 1985; Stanovich, 1982a, 1982b; Vellutino, 1987; Wagner& Torgesen, 1986). Our goal is to review the theoretical and experimentalevidence for this position to see how it informs our understanding of readingdisability and directs the way towards effective treatment of this veryprevalent form of learning disability.

INTRODUCTION

Following from the assumption that reading is primarily a visual skill, manyinvestigators sought to blame early reading difficulty on some malfunction in thevisual domain, such as a tendency to reverse letters or sequences of letters (as firstnoted by Orton, 1937). Scientific research, however, has shown that childrendeficient in visual-motor and/or visual perceptual skills do not encounter readingdifficulty any more frequently than do matched controls (Robinson & Schwartz,1973). Indeed, only a few instances of reading difficulty can be traced to somedifficulty in visual processing (d. Rayner, 1985: Stanovich, 1985; and Vellutino,1987, for recent reviews of these findings, though see Pavlidis, 1981, for a somewhatdifferent view).

Indeed, rather than being the .hallmark of children with reading problems,reversal errors are made by almost all children at some point in their development(Gibson, Gibson, Pick, & Ossler, 1962), and those who confuse Ub" and "d" or draw Un"and "s" backwards are no more likely to become poor readers than those who do not(Mann. Tobin, & Wilson, 1987; Simner, 1982). Further, letter and sequence reversalsdo not account for the majority of the reading errors that children make(Shankweiler & Liberman, 1972). Even those children who have been formallydiagnosed as "dyslexic" do not tend to misread "bag" as "dog," or "saw" as "was"-theytend to produce such errors as "butterfly" for "bag" or "swing" for "saw" (Fischer,Liberman, & Shankweiler, 1977).• As we shall discuss in a later section, a linguisticexplanation accounts more adequately for the types of errors commonly observed.

Other theories about.reading disability have regarded the poor readers' problemsas the consequence of poor cross-modal integration or a general intellectual deficit.Careful investigation of the ability to integrate information presented to differentmodalities reveals that the cross-modal integration difficulties are almost always

Haskins Laboratories

Status Report on Speech Research147

SR-93/94

1988

148

accompanied by intra-modal integration problems. Both types of difficulty are nowregarded as symptoms of poor readers' difficulties with linguistic coding (for a reviewof this literature. see Vellutino. 1979). and a subsequent section of this paper willdiscuss this linguistic coding problem and its ramifications.

The evidence with respect to IQ and reading disability is a little less clear cut.Learning to read is a complex task that can be expected to correlate with generalintellectual abilities. Rutter (1978) reports a 0.6 correlation between IQ and reading.and notes that reading acquisition for some children will be limited by lowintelligence. Yet a low IQ cannot be the sole basis of reading problems. becausedyslexic children. by definition. are backward in reading ability but average inintelligence (Rutter & Yule. 1975). and some hyperlexic children are precociousreaders despite below average IQ scores (Healy. Aram. & Horowitz. 1982). For childrenof normal IQ. the interrelationships between the various subskills of readingproblems and intelligence increase with age. probably as a result of mutualfacilitation (Stanovich. Cunningham. & Feeman. 1984a). However. measures ofcertain language abilities show a much greater association with reading ability andaccount for as much as 78% of the variance between individuals who are good readersand those who are poor readers (Mann. 1984b; Mann & Liberman. 1984; Pratt &Brady. in press; Stanovich et al.. 1984).

A crucial link between deficient language processes and reading disability isfurther suggested by two observations. First. children who are speech and language­retarded encounter reading problems at least six times more often than do controls(Ingram. Mason. & Blackburn, 1970), in contrast to the lack of correspondencebetween reading and other sorts of handicaps (Rutter. 1978). Second. a telling patternof cognitive strengths and weaknesses for poor readers has emerged from a variety ofstudies. Disabled readers conSistently do worse than excellent readers on manylanguage tasks. but generally do as well on tasks that do not involve the use oflanguage. This dichotomy between poor readers' linguistic difficulties and theirsuccess on nonlinguistic tasks is consistent with some newer theories hypothesizingthat reading is predicated on spoken language skills. We begin our review of thosetheories by considering the overlap between spoken and written language processes,and the special linguistic requirements of reading an alphabetic writing system.

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENTS FOR READING

Since writing systems represent language, written language is not a whollydifferent communication system from spoken language, but is based on spokenlanguage and thereby recruits lingUistic processes that the reader already has(Liberman. Liberman. Mattingly, & Shankweiler, 1980). Both written and spokencommunication require accessing the words of the vocabulary, analyzing the phrasesand sentences that those words comprise. and comprehending the message.Experimental evidence has shown us that many of the same processing skills arerecruited for reading and listening alike.

A central component of the processing system that serves language is a short-termmemory (STM) that holds linguistic material momentarily, pending analysis of theinput. Of special Significance are findings that whenever the processing of a sequenceof printed letters, words, etc. places demands on temporary memory, readers recodefrom print into some kind of "silent speech." or phonetic representation.Interestingly. this is equally true for English speaking and reading adults (for areview. see Mann. 1986; Perfetti & McCutchen, 1982). for adult users of languageswritten in nonalphabetic scripts (e.g.• Chinese: Tzeng. Hung, & Wang. 1977; Japanese:Erickson. Mattingly, & Turvey. 1977), and for skilled deaf readers (Hanson. 1982). Inaddition to recruiting language processing abilities. written language places a special

Mann & Brady

149

demand on the language faculty. As noted above. all writing systems represent someunit of language. Alphabets, in particular. represent consonant- and vowel-sizedsegments that are referred to as phonemes.

The primary virtue of alphabetic systems follows from their economy: any word orpossible word can be represented by combining a relatively small number ofcharacters. Learning these. together with a set of grapheme-to-phoneme conversionrules. allows readers of an alphabet to read not only highly familiar words. but evenpreviously unencountered words. (In contrast, a skilled reader of a writing systemsuch as Chinese or the Japanese Kanji in which symbols represent units ofmearungmust have memorized thousands of distinct characters. and even then may havedifficulty reading a new or infrequent word.)

The virtue of an alphabet will only be realized. however. if the would-be reader hasa conceptual framework for understanding what the letters represent. Unless anindividual appreciates the fact that words are composed of ordered sequences ofphonemes (Le.• consonants and vowels). the alphabet will make no sense as atranscription of utterances and reading will not be mastered (Liberman et at. 1971:Liberman et at. 1980: Mattingly. 1972). Yet this appreciation of the phonologicalstructure of spoken words (also termed "metalinguistic awareness" or "phonologicalawareness") may be difficult to achieve. for phonemes are abstract units of the speechstream that cannot generally be produced in isolation or be physically separated(Liberman. Cooper. Shankweiler. & Studdert-Kennedy. 1967). While speakers andhearers produce and perceive phonemes in the course of processing words. this isperformed automatically and not as a conscious activity.

The difficulty of achieving phonological awareness can be hard to appreciate forexperienced readers. because of their ability to analyze the internal structure ofwords. Skilled readers are readily cognizant of such aspects of phonological structureas the fact that "cat" and "hat" differ in one phoneme. namely the first. and share afinal phoneme. which is the initial one in "top." However. two lines of evidence speakto the difficulty of obtaining tbis knowledge. First. the abstractness of the phonememay have contributed to the fact that the alphabet was only invented once. and thenlong after orthographies representing semantic concepts or syllabic units had beenin use (Gleitman & Rozin, 1977). Second. developmental studies demonstrate quiteclearly that children find larger units such as words easier to isolate and manipulatethan smaller syllabic units. and that awareness of phonemes is latest to develop (e.g..Liberman. Shankweiler. Fischer. & Carter. 1974). These findings suggest that themetalinguistic knowledge that is a special requirement of reading may be a source ofdifficulty for beginning readers.

READING DISABILITY AND DIFFICULTIES WITH LANGUAGEPROCESSING

During the past decade, many different studies have uncovered some link betweenearly difficulties in learning to read, and difficulties with one or more aspects ofspoken language processing. Such a link has been clearly established not only inEnglish (cf. Mann. 1986a. for a review) but in other languages such as Swedish(Lundberg. Oloffson, & Wall. 1980). Japanese. and Chinese (Stevenson. Stiegler.Lucker. Hus. & Kitamura, 1982). In tbe case of English. four major areas of languageprocessing have been studied: linguistic short-term memory, phonetic perception.the rnentallexicon, and. sentence comprehension.

Much of the eVidence that we will be citing derives from studies of children in theearly elementary grades, although we note that many of the special characteristics ofdisabled readers at this age appear to hold in adolescence (McKeever & van Deventer.1975) and beyond (Read & Ruyter, 1985; Russell. 1982: Scarborough, 1984). These

Language Deficiencies and Reading Disability

150

studies have typically compared good and poor beginning readers who, by virtue ofeither selectional constraints or statistical manipulations, are equated for IQ,familial background and educational experience. The poor readers tend to be readingone grade-level or more below expectation, and the good readers tend to be readingone grade level or more above expectation.

Questions concerning deficiencies in linguistic short-term memory (STM) havegiven rise to one of the more fruitful lines of research in this field. Although memoryimpairment has long been recognized as a characteristic of children with readingproblems, the nature of the impairment has been better understood only in the lastdecade. Poor readers generally recall fewer items from short lists of linguisticmaterial than do children who are good readers. This result has been obtained with avariety of stimuli including letters, digits, nonsense syllables, words, and pictures ofnameable objects. Reading-disabled children also fail to recall words of spokensentences as accurately as good readers (Mann, Liberman, & Shankweiler, 1980).

Two findings helped pinpoint the locus of the memory problem. First, recalldeficiencies for poor readers are evident regardless of whether the items are heard orseen. Thus the deficit is not restricted to reading or to visual tasks but reflects a moreextensive memory problem. Second, when recall tasks are given that carefully avoidthe possibility of verbal labeling (e.g., by using nonsense doodle drawings), theperformance of good and poor readers is comparable (Katz, Shankweiler, &Liberman, 1981; Liberman, Mann, Shankweiler, & Werfelman, 1982; Vellutino,Pruzek, Steger, & Meshoulam, 1973). Thus the memory impairment is specific toverbal memory processes.

As noted earlier, studies with adults indicate that linguistic material in STM isstored via a phonetic representation; items are represented in terms .of "silentspeech." Recent evidence also demonstrates the use of phonetic coding in verbalmemory by children as young as age four (Eimas, 1975). Noting the specifically verbalmemory deficitS of poor readers and the reliance of verbal STM on speech coding,Liberman and then Shankweiler hypothesized that the linguistic memorydifficulties of poor readers might reflect a problem with using phoneticrepresentation. This interpretation has been supported by numerous experiments.One approach has been to vary the phonetic confusability of the list items. If goodreaders are better at fOrming phonetic representations, then they should recall morethan poor readers on the lists of phonetically distinct (nonrhyming) items, but whenthe test is loaded with confUSing (rhyming) items, the good readers' superior phoneticskills should work against them, resulting in confusion of the similar items andlowering their performance (as is seen for adults, Baddeley, 1966). This predictionhas been confirmed in several experiments, with poor readers' performance lessaffected by variations in rhyme than that of good readers (Liberman et at, 1977;Mann, Liberman, & Shankweiler, 1980; Olson, Davidson, Kleigl, & Davies, 1984). Butit should be noted, however, that the "rhyme effect" is subject to age effects (Olson etal., 1984), subject factors (Hall, Wilson, Humphreys, Tinzmann, & Bowyer, 1983), andtask factors (Brady, Mann, & Schmidt, 1987).

Further evidence that phonetic representation in short-term memory is a specificproblem for poor readers accrues from studies of the errors that poor readers makewhen attempting to recall spoken words (Brady et at, 1987; and see Byrne & Shea,1979, for a related finding). Like good readers, poor readers make transpositionerrors, recombining the phonetic information from adjacent items in the list,especially when items have phonetic features in common. Although this confirmstheir use of phonetic coding, a greater frequency of errors suggests that poor readershave less effective coding processes.

These results collectively point to a language difficulty in phonological processingfor poor readers that is not limited to the task of reading. The difficulty appears to be

Mann & Brady

151

related to phonetic coding ability. given poor readers' reduced sensitivity to rhymeand their increased tendency to make errors of phonetic transposition. As thedifferences between good and poor readers' use of phonetic representation can bepresent even before the children learn to read (Mann. 1984b; Mann & Liberman.1984). ineffective use of phonetic representation appears to be a cause. and not aconsequence. of reading difficulty.

Some attention has been devoted to the possibility that poor readers' short-termmemory deficits are based in poor perception. Because remembering something alsonecessitates that it must first have been perceived. the memory deficit may stem fromproblems in initial phonetic perception (see Brady. 1986. for a discussion). To date. anumber of studies have reported inferior performance by poor readers on speechperception tasks (Brady. Poggie. & Merlo. 1985; Brady. Shankweiler. & Mann. 1983;Godfrey. Syrdal-Lasky. Millay. & Knox. 1981; Merlo. 1986; Snowling. 1980;Snowling. Goulandris. Bowlby. & Howell. 1986).

Furthermore. in experiments examining performance on both verbal and non­verbal auditory perception. the perceptual difficulties for poor readers have only beenobserved for the linguistic stimuli. For example. Brady et al. (1983) reported noreading-group difference in accuracy with environmental sounds (e.g.. knocking on adoor. firing artillery. frogs croaking) but obtained significant group differences whenwords were presented. These findings contradict a claim that general auditoryprocesses are responsible for the perceptual deficits (Tallal. 1980a. 1980b), andreplicate the pattern in memory research of a specifically linguistic impairment.

The role of phonological processes in verbal memory functioning has been furthersupported by recent findings that in normal development there is a close linkbetween the effiCiency of phonetic skills and recall capacity in verbal STM (Brady.1986; Case. Kurland. & Goldberg. 1982; Hulme. Thomson. MUir. & Lawrence. 1984;Merlo. 1986). That is. as children get older. increases in phonetic processes parallelimprovements in verbal memory. but not in nonverbal recall. When third-grade goodand poor readers were tested jOintly on a number of phonological and memory tasks,a significant correspondence between the accuracy of phonetic processes and verbalmemory capacity (but not nonverbal memory span) was demonstrated. with poorreaders less skilled at both (Brady. 1986), Correlations between digit span andnaming speed have also been observed (Spring. 1976; Torgesen & Houck. 1980) insimilar populations. All of this is consistent with the possibility that STM is alimited capacity system in which the available resources for memory are affected bythe efficiency of initial phonological encoding (for a discussion, see Perfetti. 1985).

Phonological impairment has also been implicated in studies of the namingabilities of disabled readers. In younger children. vocabulary size bears somerelation to reading ability (see StanoVich et al.. 1984a). though good and poor readersoften have comparable vocabularies (e.g., Mann & Liberman. 1984; Wolf & Goodglass,1986). As indiViduals get older. reading experience itself contributes to superior wordknowledge for better readers (e.g.• Pratt & Brady. in press), yet there are indicationsthat disabled readers require more exposure to learn the meaning of spoken words(Nelson & Warrington, 1980).

The point that is relevant to our position regarding phonological impairments isthe observation that. even when their vocabulary size is not at issue. poor readersmay encounter problems with producing the name of an object or event (for reviews.see Katz. 1986; Wolf & Goodglass. 1986). Poor readers have more trouble retrieVing thesound structure of low frequency words than do good readers, even when they knowthe meaning of the word. For them. the phonological information for words may beless accurately represented or less easily accessed (Katz. 1986).

A likely outcome of a lower-level difficulty with phonetic representation in short··tern! memory would be difficulty repeating and comprehending sentences that place

Language Deficiencies and Reading Disability

152

heavy demands on STM (Mann. 1984b; Shankweiler & Crain. 1986). As mentionedearlier. memory experiments requiring sentence repetition have found reading groupdifferences. Several experiments report differences between good and poor readers onsentence comprehension tasks employing such constructions as relative clauses(Mann. Shankweiler. & Smith. 1985); token test items (Smith. Mann. &Shankweiler. 1987); the easy/eager distinction (Byrne. 1981) and the double objectconstruction (Fletcher. Satz. & Scholes. 1981). In recent experiments. researchershave teased apart whether poor readers have difficulty just on those sentences thatare long and place demands on memory operations. or on those that are syntacticallycomplex. By carefully controlling for both sentence length and syntacticcomplexities. it has been found that reading groups do not appear to differ in theirsyntactic knowledge. so much as in their ability to use that knowledge when thesentence stresses memory limitations (Fowler. 1987; Mann et al.• 1985).

Not surprisingly. listening comprehension problems have also been noted forchildren with reading disability (e.g.. Berger. 1978; Kotsonis & Patterson. 1980;Smiley. Oakley. Worthen. Campione. & Brown. 1977). The correlations that havefrequently been found between children's listening comprehension and readingcomprehension (see Stanovich. 1985. for a review) are also consistent with theposition that the language underpinnings are a sizable factor in reading ability.

To summarize. poor readers have been found to have a wide scope of languagedeficits. On various tests of short-term memory. speech perception. naming ability.and sentence comprehension. poor readers have often been found to have difficultyprocessing language. Whereas the language deficits may be multifaceted. evidencepoints most strongly to a unitary basis for many instances of poor reading: difficultywith phonological representation. Because this aspect of language processing iscentrally involved in reading (as discussed in a previous section). when it isinadequate. the beginning reader can be expected to encounter particular difficultieswith reading acquisition.

READING DIFFICULTY AND DIFFICULTIES WITH PHONOLOGICALAWARENESS

The fact that reading requires an explicit awareness of phonemes appears to pose aproblem for many disabled readers. One place in which their lack of phonologicalawareness is intimated is in their reading errors. Poor readers. and beginningreaders in general. tend to be correct about the pronunciation of the first letter in aword. but to have increasing difficulty with subsequent letters. and a particularproblem with vowels as opposed to consonants. While these errors relate to theorthographic complexities of English. they also indicate a lack of awareness aboutthe consonant- and vowel-sized segments that alphabets represent (Fisher et aI..1977; Shankweiler & Liberman. 1972).

Other forms of evidence confirm a strong relationship between the degree oflinguistic awareness and success in learning to read. Children who are poor readersperform poorly on a variety of tasks that require spoken words to be broken downinto syllables or phonemes. Examples of such tasks include syllable and phonemecounting games (Liberman et aI.. 1973; Liberman et aI.. 1977; Tunmer & Nesdale.1985). detection of rhyme (Bradley & Bryant. 1978). and phoneme or syllable deletion(Mann. 1986b; Morais. Cluytens. & Alegria. 1984).

Evidence that children's awareness of phonemes and syllables actuallydetermines their reading ability has been supported by three lines of evidence. First.phonological awareness skills have been found to predict later success in reading(Blachman. 1983; Bradley & Bryant. 1983; Mann 1984b; Mann & Liberman. 1984).When the metalinguistic skills of four- and five-year olds were measured and related

Mann & Brady

153

to their reading ability more than three years later.·Bradley and BIYant (1985) foundthat phonological awareness uniquely accounted for a significant portion of thevariance in future reading ability. In evaluating children's awareness at theprereading stage. both phonemic and syllabic units have been utilized. The fact thatproblems with syllable segmentation can presage reading problems (e.g.• Mann &:Libennan. 1982) is noteworthy because the alphabet does not represent syllables inany direct way. This raises the possibility that a more general capacity for awarenessabout any type of phonological segment is related to success in learning to read aphonological transcription such as an alphabet or a syllabaIY (Mann. 1986b).

A second line of evidence that supports a causal link between phoneme awarenessand reading ability concerns the effects of training in metalinguistic awareness onlearning to read (Bradley &: BIYant. 1985; Elkonin. 1973; Treiman &: Baron. 1983;Wallach &: Wallach. 1976). Although more research in this area is needed beforedefinitive conclusions can be drawn. research suggests that training in phonolOgicalawareness facilitates reading acquisition. For example. using a program thatcombined explicit training about the phoneme-sized units in spoken words. followedby training in letter-sound correspondences and decoding. Williams (1980) foundsignificant improvement in learning-disabled children's decoding skills. comparedto the skills of an untreated control group.

A third line of evidence utilizes path analysis techniques to show that phonemesegmentation skills are directly related to reading performance (Lundberg et a!..1980; Tunmer &: Nesdale. 1985) and spell1ng ttomeus. 1984). Taken together. all threelines of evidence suggest that acquiring metalJnguJstlc awareness of the phonologicalunits of language Js a necessaty precursor to learnIng to use an orthography thattranscribes those units.

However. it must also be mentioned that some inVestigators have argued thatlingUistic awareness· is developed as a consequence of reading instruction.particularly phonIcs-Qnented reading instruction. One study investigated phonemicsegmentation ability in matched groups of literate and illiterate Portuguese adults(MoraJs etal.• 1979).1be literate group was superiOr to the illiterate group. indicatingthat reading experience maybe .respol'lSible for thts skill. Similarly•. Chinese readerswho had not been introduced to· an alphabetic SCript were less able to perform aphoneme mantpul8.tion taslt than those who had (Read. Zhang. Nie. &: Ding. 1986).Another study demonstrated thatphonics-onented reading Instruction wasstrikingly more effective in developing phoneme. awareness than was sight-wordinstruction (Alegria. Plgnot. &: Morais. 1982). Apparently. awareness of phonemes Jsenhanced by methods of instruction that direct attention to the phonetic structure ofwords. and may even depend upon It.

Yet. the experience of learning to read an alphabet cannot be the only factor behindwhether children achieve phonological awareness or not. Some children becomeaware of phonemes without being taught to read an alphabet (Mann. 1986b). andothers rau to become aware despite years of educational experience. This latter pointis aptly shown by a contrast between a group of stx-year-old skilled readers and ten­year-old disabled readers who were matched for reading ability: the disabled readersperformed Significantly worse on a phoneme awareness task. even though they wouldbe expected to have had conSiderably more reading instruction than the youngerchildren (Bradley &: BIYant. 1978). Studies of adults who were functionally illiteratedespite years of instruction (rnany were high school graduates) make the same point(Pratt &: Brady. in press; Simpson &: Byrne. in press). In such populations. readingability is. still linked to phonological awareness. and illiterate subjects who possessphonological awareness are more likely to achieve literacy than those who do not(Liberman. Rubin. Duques. &: Carlisle. 1985; Read &: Ruyter. 1985).

Language Deficiencies and Reading Disability

154

All in all. the relationship between phonological awareness and reading abilitymay best be viewed as a complex. two-way street. Awareness of the phonologicalelements in spoken words clearly facilitates the task of learning what letterssymbolize. On the other hand. reading instruction. particularly a phonics approach.does generally augment metalinguistic awareness. However. for some individualsthere is a fundamental difficulty achieving metalinguistic awareness that is not dueto a lack of educational experience.

PRACTICAL APPLICAnONS

One of the benefits of the research described herein is the direction it provides forpractical applications. The convergent evidence for the linguistic basis of readingproblems provides a valuable gUideline for their diagnosis and treatment. As a firststep. the research tells us most clearly which cognitive processes are not implicatedin reading disability. The various nonlinguistic treatment programs that have beenpromulgated (such as large-motor activities like balance-beam walking; drugtreatment of cerebellar-vestibular functioning; visual perception training; eyemovement practice; stress reduction. etc.) cannot be expected to alleviate the languagedifficulties involved in reading problems (see Stanovich. 1985. for discussion).Similarly. instructional programs that incorporate practice in nonlinguisticactivities such as labeling environmental sounds or that suggest "teaching to theright hemisphere" are not supported by what is known about the reading process orabout the cognitive deficits of disabled readers.

More optimistically. the research points the way toward effective approaches inthe identification of reading problems. and for appropriate instruction andremediation. The two areas reviewed in this paper. underlying language abilities andphonological awareness. are both relevant in this regard. We will briefly note some ofthe practical implications of this literature. and will indicate available sources formOn: extensive treatment of this topic.

In attempting to identify children at risk for early reading problems. tests ofphoneme and syllable awareness look particularly proInising. As noted earlier.several studies have reported that phonological awareness skills in kindergartenersare causally related to the later acqUisition of reading (Bradley & Bryant. 1985;Lundberg et aI.. 1980; Mann. 1984b; Mann & Liberman. 1984; Mann et al.• 1987;Stanovich. Cunningham. & Cramer. 1984). Other phonological abilities such asverbal short-term memory (Jorm. Share. Maclean & Matthews. 1984; Mann. 1984b;Mann & Liberman. 1984) and object naming (Wolf & Goodglass. 1986) have also beenfound to predict later reading success. It remains to be determined what theinterrelationships of these language processes are. Nonetheless. the predictive valueof assessing early language abilities has been convincingly demonstrated. and wouldbe advantageous in standard screening procedures as well as in evaluation ofchildren known to be at risk (e.g.• children with familial histories of dyslexia;Vogler. DeFries. & Decker. 1985). Correspondingly. assessment of school-agechildren who are encountering reading difficulty should include measures ofphonological awareness and underlying language processing skills in order todetermine whether language deficits are implicated. or whether the reading problemhas other origins (e.g.. attentional problems. motivation. etc.)

The importance of phonological awareness concepts for reading acquisition alsohas implications for beginning instruction. As noted in the previous section. severaltraining studies obtained benefiCial results from training in phonological awarenesson reading or reading-related skills. These empirical findings. together with thetheoretical framework on the importance of phonological awareness for learning toread. lead us to recommend that pre-reading training incorporate much more

Mann & Brady

155

systematic introduction to the phonological units of language. (This can involveword play. learning nursery rhymes. etc. Some excellent suggestions are available inLiberman. Shankweiler. Blachman. Camp. & Werfelman. 1980: see also Williams.1980. and Elkonin. 1973).

When a child is ready for formal reading instruction. the use of a phonics approachis Widely advocated as the most direct and facilitative method. Many have arguedcogently that phonics-based instruction most effectively meets the cognitive andlanguage requirements in reading (for example. Chall. 1979: Calfee et at. 1973:Liberman et at. 1980). We refer the reader to these excellent sources and note alsothat the Orton Dyslexia SOCietyl is a valuable source of information about availabletechniques and current methods.

Within this framework. there is also strong consensus that decoding ability iscritical to reading performance (Chall. 1967. 1979: Gough. 1981: Liberman. 1982;Mann. 1984b: Perfetti & Roth. 1981: Samuels. 1979: Stanovich. 1982a. 1982b. 1985:Vellutino. 1979). Research indicates that the ability to translate the graphemicsymbols into a phonological representation rapidly and automatically accounts inlarge measure for a reader's ability to access word meanings and to make use ofcontext (Perfetti. 1985: Stanovich. CUnningham. & Feeman. 1984a). Thus decodingskills need to be emphasized for all beginning readers. and especially for poorreaders whose memory deficits impede the prOCess.

Remediation recommendations are an ~ension of the approach described here.Investigations with older children and illiterate adults find ongoing deficits inphonological awareness (Liberman et at. 1985: Pratt & Brady. in press: Read &Ruyter. 1986; Simpson & Byrne. in press) and in memory (McKeever & Vandeventer.1975: Olson et al.• 1984). The results of such experiments shOWing persistent deficitsindicate the need. whatever the age of the WOUld-be reader. for inclusion of trainingin linguistic awareness. and for overlearning decoding skills. With the recentadvances in our understanding of reading disability. we can look forward to aproliferation of appropriate procedures and materials for inteIVention purposes.

CONCLUSION

It is generally agreed that many instances of reading difficulty are language-based.We have reviewed the theoretical and experimental findings about the role oflanguage in skilled reading. and the evidence that early reading disability tends toreflect problems in one or both of two areas: language processing and metalingufsticawareness. In future research it will be important to continue studying therelationship amongchildren's reading ability. metalinguistic abilities. and spokenlanguage processes. Much remains to be ascertained about the normal developmentof each ability-their antecedents and their •. interrelations as well as theirpathologies. Ultimately. clarification of the cognitive abilities that are closelylinked to reading skill. will have further implications for methods of readinginstruction. for assessment of reading problems and for pre-reading activities thatmay reduce the incidence of reading difficulty.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This paper. and much of the research herein described. were funded by NICHDGrant HD-0l994 and BRS Grant 05596 to Haskins Laboratories. and also by NICHDGrant HD21182-01 to Virginia Mann at Bryn Mawr College.

Language Deficiencies and Reading Disability

156

REFERENCES

Alegria, J., & Pignot, E. (1979). Genetic aspects of verbal mediation in memory. Child Development,50,235-238.

Alegria, J., Pignot, E., & Morais, J. (1982). Phonetic analysis of speech and memory codes in beginningreaders. Memory & Cognition, 10, 451-456.

Baddeley, A. (1966). Short-term memory for word sequences as a function of acoustic, semantic, andformal similarity. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 362-365.

Berger, N. (1978). Why can't John read? Perhaps he's not a good listener. Journal of LearningDisabilities, 11, 633-638.

Blachman. B. (1983). Are we assessing the linguistic factors critical in early reading? Annals ofDyslexia, 33, 91-109.

Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1978). Difficulties in auditory organization as a possible cause of readingbackwards. Nature, 271, 746-747.

Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. (1985). Rhyme and reason in reading and spelling. Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan.

Brady, S. (1986). Short-term memory, phonological processing and reading ability. Annals ofDyslexia, 36, 138-153.

Brady,S., Mann, V. A., & Schmit, R. (in press). Errors in short-term memory for good and poorreaders. Memory & Cognition.

Brady, S., Poggie, E., & Merlo, M. (1986). An investigation of speech perception abilities in childrenwho differ in reading skill. Haskins Laboratories Status Report on Speech Research, SR-85,23-37.

Brady, S., Shankweiler, D., & Mann, V. (1983). Speech perception and memory coding in relation toreading ability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 35, 345-367.

Brandt, J., & Rosen, J. J. (1980). Auditory phonemic ~ception in dyslexia: Categorical identificationand discrimination of stop consonants. Brain and Language, 9, 324-337.

Bruce, D. J. (1964). Analysis of word sounds by young children. British Journal of ~ducational

Psychology, 34, 158-169.Byrne, B. (1981). Deficient syntactic control in poor readers: Is a weak phonetic memory code

responsible? Applied Psycholinguistics, 2, 201-212.Byrne, B., Ie Shea, P. (1979). Semantic and phonetic memory in beginning readers. Memory &

Cognition, 7, 333-338.Calfee, R., Lindamood, P., Ie Lindamood, C. (1973). Acoustic-phonetic skills and reading­

kindergarten through twelfth grade. Journal of EduCidional Psychology, 64, 293-298.Carr, T. H. (1981). Building theories of reading ability: On the relation between individual differences

in cognitive skills and reading comprehension. Cognition, 9, 73-114.Case, R., Kurland, D. M., Ie Goldberg, J. (1982). Operational efficiency and the growth of short-term

memory span. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 33, 386-404.Chall, J. (1967). Learning to read: The great debate. New York: McGraw Hill.Chall, J. (1979). The great debate: Ten years later with a modest proposal for reading stages. In L.

Resnick & P. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and practice of early reading (Vol. I). Hillsdale, NJ: ErlbaumAssociates.

Conrad, R. (1972). Speech and Reading. In J. F. Kavanaugh and I. G. Mattingly (Eds.), Language byEar and by Eye (pp. 205-240). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Denckla, M. B., & Rudel, R. G. (1976). Naming of object drawings by dyslexic and other learning­disabled children. Brain and Language, 3, 1-15.

Erikson, D., Mattingly, I., &: Turvey, M. (1977). Phonetic activity in reading: An experiment with Kanji.Language and Speech, 20, 384-403.

Eimas, P. D. (1975). Distinctive feature codes in the short-term memory of children. Journal ofExperimental Child Psychology, 19, 241-251.

Elkol'\in, D. B. (1973). U.S.S.R. In J. Downing (Ed.), Comparative reading: Cross-national studies ofbehavior processes in reading and writing. New York: MacMillan.

Fisher, F. W., Liberman, I. Y., & Shankweiler, D. (977). Reading reversals and developmentaldyslexia: A further study. Cortex 14, 496-510.

Fletcher, J. M., Satz, P., & Scholes, R. (1981). Developmental changes in the linguistic performancecorrelates of reading achievements. Brain and Language, 13, 78-90.

Fowler, A. (in press). Grammaticality judgments and reading in second-grade children. Annals ofDyslexia.

Mann & Brady

157

Fox, B., & Routh, D. K. (1976). Phonemic analysis and synthesis as word-attack skills. Journal ofEducational Psychology, 69, 70-74.

Gelb, I. J. (1963). A study of writing (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Gibson, E. J., Gibson, J. J., Pick, A. D., & Ossler, R. A (1962). Developmental study of the discrimination

of letter-like forms. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 897-906.Gleitman, L., & Rozin, P. (1977). The structure and acquisition of reading. I: Relations between

orthographies and the structure of language. In A. S. Reber & D. L. Scarborough (Eds.), Toward apsychology of reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum Associates.

Godfrey, J. L., Syrdal-Lasky, A. K., Millay, K. K., & Knox, C. M. (1981). Performance of dyslexic childrenon speech perception tasks. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 32, 401-424.

Gough, P. (1981). A comment on Kenneth Goodman. In M. Kamil (Ed.), Directions in reading:Research and instruction. Clemson, SC: National Reading Conference.

Hall, J., Wilson, K., Humphreys, M., Tinzmann, M., & Bowyer, P. (1983). Phonemic similarity effects ingood vs. poor readers. Memory & Cognition, 11, 520-527.

Healy, J., Aram, D., & Horowitz, S. (1982). A study of hyperlexia. Brain & Language, 17, 1-23.Hanson, V. (1982). The use of orthographic structure by deaf adults: Recognition of finger-spelled

words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 3, 343-356.Hulme, C., Thomson, N., Muir, c., & Lawrence, A. (1984). Speech rate and the development of short­

term memory span. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38, 241-253.Ingram, T. T. S., Mason, A. W., & Blackburn, I. (1970). A retrospective study of 82 children with

reading disability. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 12, 271-281.Jackson, M., & McClelland, J. L. (1979). Processing determinants of reading speed. Journal of

Experimental Psychology: General, 108, 151-181.Jorm, A. F. (1979). The cognitive and neurological basis of developmental dyslexia: A theoretical

framework and review. Cognition, 7, 19-33.Jorm, A. F., Share, D. L., Maclean, R., & Matthews, R. (1984). Phonological confusability in short-term

memory for sentences as a predictor of reading ability. British Journal of Psychology, 75, 393-400.Katz, R. B. (1986). Phonological deficiencies in children with reading disability: Evidence from an

object naming task. Cognition, 22, 225-257.Katz, R. B., Shankweiler, D., & Liberman, I. Y. (1981). Memory for item order and phonetic recoding in

the beginning reader. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 32, 474-484.Kleiman, G. (1975). Speech recoding in reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14,

323-339.Kotsonis, M., & Patterson, C. (1980). Comprehension monitoring skills in learning-disabled children.

Developmental Psychology, 16, 541-542.Levy, B. A. (1977). Reading: Speech and meaning processes. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal

Behavior, 16, 623-638.Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. S., Shankweiler, D., & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1967). Perception of the

speech code. Psychological Review, 74, 431-461.Liberman, I. Y. (1973). Segmentation of the spoken word and reading acquisition. Bulletin of the

Orton Society, 23, 65-77.Liberman, I. Y.(1982). A Language-oriented view of reading and its disabilities. In H. Mykelburst

(Ed.), Progress in learning disabilities (Vol. 5). New York: Grune & Stratton.Liberman, I. Y., Liberman, A. M., Mattingly, I. G., & Shankweiler, D. (1980). Orthography and the

beginning reader. In J. Kavanaugh & R. Venezky (Eds.), Orthography, reading and dyslexia.Baltimore: University Park Press.

Liberman, I. Y., Mann, V. A., Shankweiler, D., & Werfelman, M. (1982). Children's memory forrecurring linguistic and non-linguistic material in relation to reading ability. Cortex, 18, 367-375.

Liberman, I. Y., Rubin, H., Duques, S., & Carlisle, J. (1985). Linguistic skills and spelling proficiency inkindergarteners and adult poor spellers. In J. Kavanaugh, D. Gray, & D. Pearl (Eds.), Dyslexia:Biology and behavior. Parker, MD: York Press.

Liberman, I. Y., Shankweiler, D., Blachman, B., Camp, L., & Werfelman, M. (1980). Steps towardsliteracy. Report prepared for Working Group on Learning Failure and Unused LearningPotential. President's Commission on Mental Health, Nov. 1, 1977. In P. Levinson & C. H. Sloan(Eds.), Auditory processing and language: Clinical and research perspectives. New York: Grune &Stratton.

Liberman, I. Y., Shankweiler, D., Fischer, F. W., & Carter, B. (1974). Explicit syllable and phonemesegmentation in the young child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 18, 201-212.

Language Deficiencies and Reading Disability

158

Liberman, I. Y., Shankweiler, D., Liberman, A. M., Fowler, c., & Fischer, F. W. (1977). Phoneticsegmentation and recoding in the beginning reader. In A. S. Reber & D. Scarborough (Eds.),Towards a psychology of reading: The proceedings of the CUNY conference. Hillsdale, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Lundberg, I., Oloffson, A., & Wall, S. (1980). Reading and spelling skills in the first school yearspredicated from phoneme awareness skills in kindergarten. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology,21,159-173.

Mann, V. A. (1986a). Why some children encounter reading problems: The contribution of difficultieswith language processing and linguistic sophistication to early reading disability. In J. K. Torgesen& B. Y. Wong (Eds.), Psychological and educational perspectives on learning disabilities (pp. 133­159). New York: Academic Press.

Mann, V. A. (1986b). Phonological awareness: The role of reading experience. Cognition, 24, 65-92.Mann, V. A. (1984a). Reading skill and language skill. Developmental Review, 4, 1-15.Mann, V. A. (1984b). Longitudinal prediction and prevention of reading difficulty. Annals of Dyslexia,

34,117-137.Mann, V. A., & Liberman, I. Y. (1984). Phonological aWareness and verbal short-term memory.

Journal of Learning Disabilities, 17, 592-598.Mann, V. A., Liberman, I. Y., & Shankweiler, D. (1980). Children's memory for sentences and word

strings in relation to reading ability. Memory & Cognition, 8,329-335.Mann, V. A., Shankweiler, D., & Smith, S. T. (1985). The association between comprehension of spoken

sentences and early reading ability: The role of phonetic representation. Journal of ChildLanguage, 11,627-643.

Mann, V. A., Tobin, P., & Wilson, R. (1987). Measuring phonological awareness through the inventedspellings of kindergarten children. Merrill Palmer Quarterly, 00, 00-00.

Mason, W. (1976). Specific (developmental) dysleXia. Developmental Medicine and ChildNeurology, 9, 183-190. .

Mattingly, I. G. (1972). Reading, the linguistic process, and linguistic awareness. In J. F. Kavanaugh &I. G. Mattingly (Eds.), Language by ear and by eye: The relationship between speech and reading.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

McKeever, W. F., & van Deventer, A. D. (1975). Dyslexic adolescents: Evidence of impaired visualand auditory language processing associated with normal lateralization and visual responsivity.Cortex, 11, 361-378.

Merlo, M. (1986). Reading ability and short-term memory: The role of phonetic processing skills.Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI.

Money, J. (1973). Turner's syndrome and parietal lobe functions. Cortex, 9, 387-393.Morais, J. Cary, L., Alegria, J., & Bertelson., P. (1979). Does awareness of speech as a sequence of

phonemes arise spontaneously? Cognition, 7, 323-331.Morais, J., Ouytens, M., & Alegria, J. (1984). segmentation abilities of dyslexics and normal readers.

Perceptual and Motor Skills, 58, 221-222.Nelson, H., & Warrington, E. (1980). An investigation of memory functions in dyslexic children.

British Journal of Psychology, 21, 487-503.Olson, R., Davidson, B., Kliegl, R., & Davies, S. (1984). Development of phonetic memory in disabled

and normal readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 37, 187-206.Olson, R. K., Kliegl, R., & Davidson, B. J. (1983). Dyslexic and normal readers' eye movements.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 9, 816-825.Orton, S. T. (1937). Reading, writing and speech problems in children. New York: Norton.Pavlidis, G. (1981). sequencing, eye movements and the early objective diagnosis of dyslexia. In G.

Pavlidis & T. Miles (Eds.), Dyslexia research and its applications to education. Chichester: JohnWiley.

Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading skill. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Perfetti, C. A., & McCutchen, D. (1982). Speech processes in reading. Speech and language:

Advances in basic research and practice, 7, 237-269.Perfetti, C., & Roth, S. (1981). Some of the interactive processes in reading and their role in reading

skill. In A. Lesgold & C. Perfetti (Eds.), Interactive processes in reading. Hillsdale, NJ: ErlbaumAssociates.

Pratt, A., & Brady, S. (in press). The relationship of phonological awareness to reading disability inchildren and adults. Journal of Educational Psychology.

Mann & Brady

159

Rayner, K. (1985). Do faulty eye movements cause dyslexia? Developmental Neuropsychology, 1,3­15.

Read, c., & Ruyter, L. (1986). Reading and spelling skills in adults of low literacy. Remedial andSpecial Education, 6, 8-17.

Read, c., Zhang, Y., Nie, H., & Ding, B. (1986). The ability to manipulate speech sounds depends onknowing alphabetic transcription. Cognition.

Robinson, M. E., & Schwartz, L. B. (1'973). Visuo-motor skills and reading ability: A longitudinal study.Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 15, 280-286.

Rozin, P., Bressman, B., & Taft, M. (1974). Do children understand the basic relationship betweenspeech and writing? The Mow-motorcycle Test. Journal of Reading Behavior, 6, 327-334.

Russell, G. (1982). Impairment of phonetic reading in dyslexia and its persistence beyond childhood­research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry, 23, 459-475.

Rutter, M. (1978). Prevalence and types of dyslexia. In A. L. Benton and D. Pearl (Eds.), Dyslexia: Anappraisal of current knowledge (pp. 3-28). New York: Oxford Press.

Rutter, M., & Yule, W. (1975).The concept of specific reading retardation. Journal of Child Psychiatry,16,181-198.

Samuels, S. (1979). How the mind works when reading: Describing elements no one has ever seen. InL. Resnick & P. Weaver (Eds.), Theory and practice of early reading (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: ErlbaumAssociates.

Scarborough, H. S. (1984). Continuity between childhood dyslexia and adult reading. British Journalof Psychology, 75, 329-348.

Shankweiler, D., & Crain, S. (1986). Language mechanisms in reading disorder: A modular approach.Cognition, 24, 139-168.

Shankweiler, D., & Liberman, I. Y. (1972). Misreading: A search for the causes. In J. F. Kavanaugh & I.G. Mattingly (Eds.), Language by ear and by eye: The relationships between speech and reading.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Shankweiler, D., Liberman, I. Y., Mark, L. S., Fowler, C. A., & Fisher, F. W. (1979). The speech code andlearning to read. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 5, 531­545.

Simner, M. L. (1982). Printing errors in kindergarten and the prediction of academic performance.Journal of Learning Disabilities, 15, 155-159.

Simpson, L., & Byrne, B. (in press). Phonological awareness in reading-disabled adults: A follow-upstudy. Australian Journal of Psychology.

Slowiaczek, M. L., & Clifton, C. (1980). Subvocalization and reading for meaning. Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 573-582.

Smiley, S., Oakley, D., Worthen, D., Campione, J., & Brown, A. (1977). Recall of thematically relevantmaterial by adolescent good and poor readers as a function of written versus oral presentation.Journal of Educational Psychology, 69, 381-387.

Smith, S. (1987). Syntactic comprehension in reading-disabled children. Unpublished DoctoralDissertation, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT.

Smith, S., Mann, V. A., & Shankweiler, D. (1987). Token test performance by good and poor readers.Cortex, 22, 627-632.

Snowling, M. (1980). Phonemic deficits in developmental dyslexia. Psychological Research, 43, 219­234.

Snowling, M., Goulandris, N., Bowlby, M., & Howell, P. (1986). Segmentation and speech perception inrelation to reading skill: A developmental analysis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 41,489-507.

Spring, C. (1976). Encoding speech and memory span in dyslexia children. Journal of SpecialEducation, 10, 35-40.

Stanovich, K. (1982a). Individual differences in the cognitive processes of reading: I. Word decoding.Journal of Learning Disabilities, 15, 485-493.

Stanovich, K. (1982b). Individual differences in the cognitive processes of reading: II. Text-levelprocesses. Journal of Learning Disabilities, IS, 549-554.

Stanovich, K. E. (1985). Explaining the variance in reading ability in terms of psychological processes:What have we learned? Annals of Dyslexia, 35,67-96.

Stanovich, K. E., Cunningham, A. E., & Cramer, B. B. (1984). Assessing phonological awareness inkindergarten children: Issues of task comparability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38,175-190.

Language Deficiencies and Reading Disability

160

Stanovich, K. E., Cunningham, A. E., & Feeman, D. J. (1984). Intelligence, cognitive skills and earlyreading progress. Reading Research Quarterly, 14, 278-303.

Stanovich, K., Cunningham, A., & Feeman, D. (1984c). The relationship between early readingacquisition and word decoding with and without context: A longitudinal study of first-gradechildren. Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, 668-677.

Stevenson, H. W., Stiegler, J. W., Lucker, G. W., Hsu, C-c., & Kitamura, S. (1982). Readingdisabilities: The case of Chinese, Japanese and English. Child Development, 53, 1164-1181.

Tallal, P. (1980a). Language and reading: Some perceptual prerequisites. Bulletin of the OrtonSociety, 30, 170-178.

Tallal, P. (1980b). Auditory temporal perception, phonics, and reading disabilities in children. Brainand Language, 9, 182-198.

Torgesen, J. K., & Hoack, D. J. (1980). Processing deficiencies of learning-disabled children whoperform poorly on the digit span test. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72, 141-160.

Torneus, M. (1984). Phonological awareness and reading: A chicken and egg problem? Journal ofEducational Psychology, 76, 1346-1358.

Treiman, R., & Baron, J. (1981). Segmental analysis ability: Development and relation to readingability. In T. G. Waller & G. E. MacKinnon (Eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory andpractice (Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press.

Tunmer, W., & Nesdale, A. (1985). Phonemic segmentation skill and beginning reading. Journal ofEducational Psychology, 77,417-427.

Tzeng, O. J. L., Hung, D. L., & Wang, W. S-Y. (1977). Speech recoding in reading Chinese characters.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 3, 621-630.

Vellutino, F. R. (1987). Dyslexia. Scientific American, 256, 34-41.Vellutino, F. R. (1979). Dyslexia: Theory and research. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Vellutino, F., Pruzek, R., Steger, J., & Meshoulam, V. (1973). Immediate visual recall in poor and

normal readers as a function of orthographic-linguistic familiarity. Cortex, 9, 368-384.Vellutino, F. R., & Scanlon, D. M. (1985). Free recall of concrete and abstract words in poor and

normal readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 39, 363-380.Vernon, M. D. (1979). Variability in reading retardation. British Journal of Psychology, 70, 7-16.Vogler, G. P., DeFries, J. c., & Decker, S. N. (1985). Family history as an indicator of risk for reading

disability. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 17, 616-618.Wagner, R. K., & Torgesen, J. K. (1987). The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in

the acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 192-212.Wallach, M., & Wallach, L. (1976). Teaching all children to read. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.Williams, J. (1980). Teaching decoding with an emphasis on phoneme analysis and phoneme

blending. Journal of Educational Psychology, 72, 1-15.Wolf, M., & Goodglass, H. (1986). Dyslexia, dysnomia and lexical retrieval: A longitudinal

investigation. Brain and Language, 28, 159-168.

FOOTNOTES

*A shorter version of this paper will appear in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.tUniversity of California, Irvine.

ttUniversity of Rhode Island, Kingston.INational Address: The Orton Dyslexia Society, 724 York Rd., Baltimore, MD 21204 Telephone: 301296-0232.

Mann & Brady