The performance of average readers on a battery of psycholinguistic tests

[摘要] This study of the performance of a sample of average readers on abax t any of psycholinguistic tests, was conducted in order toprovide norms fat' these tests. The sample was drawn from twoprivate schools in Johannesburg and was selected on the basis ofage~appropriate performance on the Schonell Graded Word ReadingTest. Scores on the Psycholinguistic Tests were expected toconform to predictions of an Information Processing Model whichidentifies two reading strategies: a direct strategy for reading,which depends on the recognition of the visual appearance of thewhole word; and a second indirect or phonological strategy, whichis dependent on the use of grapheme-phoneme correspondence. Thisfunctional model of adult language processing has been applied inthe present study to the development of reading abi Ii ties inchildren. Research has shown that children use dual routes inreading as well, and that I while younger readers are more dependenton the indirect or phonological route, more proficient olderreaders rely predominantly on the lexical or direct route. It wasexpected therefore that different reading strategies would be usedfor different word types at different ages. As the means for thetests supplied by this study conform to p~edictions of the DualProcessing Model and support the pr oposition of developmentalchanges in reading strategies, these means may be used as anindication of normal processing strategies in children, therebypermitting the identification of deviant reading strategies inchildren of different ages.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand