This article first appeared at RealClearEducation.com on April 29, 2014.


Do children learn to read by translating letters into sound, or by perceiving the spelling of the word? The answer has an indirect bearing on teaching; it would presumably be best to instruct kids in a way consonant with how most perform the task. The last fifteen years has seen an increasing consensus among researchers: children initially learn via the letter-sound translation mechanism. As they gain reading practice, they acquire the spelling mechanism as well, although the letter-sound translation method continues to make a contribution to reading. Now a new study of 284 French children in grades 1 through 5 offers support to this model (Ziegler et al, 2014).

From the child’s perspective, the experimental task was simple. They sat before a computer screen. An asterisk appeared at the center for one second, and then a string of letters replaced the asterisk (I’ll call this the “response letter string.”) Children were to push one button if the response letter string formed a word, and another if it did not.

What the kids were not told was that another letter string actually appeared between the asterisk’s disappearance and the appearance of the response letter string. This letter string (called the prime) appeared for just .07 seconds, so the children didn’t consciously see it—if anything, they might have thought the screen flickered.

Even though you’re unaware of it, the prime can influence your response. If the prime is “MOP” and then the response letter string is also “MOP,” you’re faster to verify that “MOP” is indeed a word, compared to how fast you respond if the prime were a non-matching word, say, “DOG.” Even though you were unaware of the prime, you read it, and so you’re a bit faster to read it a second time.

But what if the prime were “MAWP?” Would you still be faster to verify that “MOP?” is a word when it appears? If you think that people read via letter-sound translation, the answer ought to be yes. When “MAWP” appears, you read it and generate the right sound, and if sound is the basis of reading, you should get the advantage when “MOP” appears.

Using a comparable method, the researchers tested whether kids read via spelling. They used a prime with nearly the same spelling as the response letter string: for example “TALBE” followed by “TABLE.” Other work has shown the readers are pretty resistant to spelling errors like this one, where letters are off by just one position (McCusker et al, 1981). So if you’re using the spelling of a word to identify it, we can expect that you’ll be faster to verify that “TABLE” is a word if the prime was “TALBE,” compared to a prime like “CAIRH.” 

So take a moment and guess. Do first graders read mostly by sound or by spelling? How about fifth graders?

The data indicated that first graders read by sound. With each successive year, kids showed more and more evidence of using the spelling of words in their reading. BUT there was no diminution of the influence of sound. Experienced readers use both the sound and the spelling mechanisms.

This result fits with the following view of reading: most kids will learn to read by learning to sound out words. With practice over the course months and years, they develop an increasing number (and increasingly robust) mental representations that allow them to identify words by their appearance, i.e., by their spelling. These representations form as a consequence of reading practice and don’t require any special instruction. This general view accords with other behavioral data showing that methods of reading instruction that emphasize phonics have an edge over other methods.

References:

McCusker, L. X., Gough, P. B. & Bias, R. G. (1981). Word recognition inside out and outside in. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7, 538-551.

Ziegler, J. C., Bertrand, D., Lété, B., & Grainger, J. (2014). Orthographic and phonological contributions to reading development: Tracking developmental trajectories using masked priming. Developmental Psychology, 50, 1026-1036.

This article first appeared on the RealClearEducation website on April 22, 2014.

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You often hear the phrase that small children are sponges, that they constantly learn. This sentiment is sometimes expressed in a way that makes it sound like the particulars don’t matter that much; as long as there is a lot to be learned in the environment, the child will learn it. A new study shows that for one core type of learning, it’s more complicated. Kids don’t learn important information that’s right in front of them, unless an adult is actively teaching them. 

The core type of learning is categorization. Understanding that objects can be categorized is essential for kids’ thinking. Kids constantly encounter novel objects; for example, each apple they see is an apple they’ve never encountered before. The child cannot experiment with each new object to figure out its properties; she must benefit from her prior experience with other apples, so that she can know, for example, that this object, since it’s an apple, must be edible.

But how can a child tell which properties of the apple are incidental (e.g., it has a long stem) and which properties are true of all apples (it’s edible)?  The child must ignore many incidental properties, and hold on to the important properties that are true of all apples.

Previous research shows that by age three or four, children are sensitive to linguistic cues about this matter. They appropriately attach significance to the difference between “This apple has a long stem” and “Apples are good for eating.” “This apple” signifies that the information provided applies only to this particular apple; “Apples” indicates a generalization about all apples.

A recent study (Butler & Markman, 2014) examined whether there are cues outside of language that guide children in resolving this problem. The researchers tested the possibility that children are sensitive to adults teaching them; if an adult deliberately highlights a property for the child’s benefit, that presumably is a property of some importance, and one that is characteristic  of all objects of this sort.

Children (aged 4-5) were shown a novel object and were told that it was a “spoodle.” There was a brief test to be sure that the child got the name right, and then another, irrelevant task. The experimenter began to clean the materials from this other task, and this is when the special property of the spoodle came into play; spoodles are magnetic.

In the pedagogical condition, the experimenter said “Look, watch this” and used the spoodle to pick up paperclips. In the intentional condition, the experimenter used the spoodle to pick up paperclips, but did not request the child’s attention or make eye contact. In the accidental condition, the experimenter feigned accidentally dropping the spoodle on the clips. In all of the conditions, the experimenter held the spoodle with the paper clips clinging to it and said “wow!”

Next, the child was presented 16 objects and was asked to say which were spoodles. Half were identical to the original spoodle, and half were another color. In addition, half of each color were magnetic and half were not.

So the question is which property kids think makes an object a spoodle: appearance (i.e., color) or function (i.e., magnetism). The data are shown here:

These children were clearly quite sensitive to the non-verbal teaching. Recall that in the Intentional condition, the adult used the spoodle’s function purposefully. The child could easily infer that magnetism is an important property of spoodles. But the children didn’t. Appearance made a spoodle a spoodle for these kids.

Yet when the adult did the exact same thing, but also made plain to the child her actions were for the child’s benefit, that she was teaching, then the child understood that magnetism held special significance for spoodle-hood.

I think this study has an interesting implication for differences in kids’ preparedness for schooling, associated with their home environment. We tend to focus on differences in the richness of experiences available to kids. That’s important, but this experiment provides a concrete example of small differences in parenting may have important consequences for children’s learning. “Little sponges” don’t learn certain types of information, even in a rich environment. They have to be taught.

Reference:

Butler, L. P., & Markman, E. M. (2014). Preschoolers use pedagogical cues to guide radical reorganization of category knowledge. Cognition, 130,  116-127.

This piece first appeared on RealClearEducation.com on April 16, 2014.
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A recent article in the Washington Post sounds a warning klaxon for our ability to read deeply. You’ve probably heard this argument elsewhere, made most forcefully by Nick Carr in the The Shallows: frequent users of the Web (i.e., most of us) are so in the habit of skittering from page to page, scanning for juicy bits of information but not really reading, that they have lost the ability to sit down and read prose from start to finish. I think the suggestion is probably wrong.

The first thing to make clear is that anyone who comments on this issue (including me) is guessing. There are simply not any data that address it directly. We might predict, for example, that scores on standardized reading tests would have dropped in the last fifteen years or so (they haven’t) but such data are hardly definitive, as reading comprehension test scores are a product of many factors.

The Post article cites studies comparing reading on paper versus reading on screens, but that won’t address the issue, which concerns the long-term consequences of a particular type of reading. The Post also incorrectly says that paper is superior. Most studies indicate no difference between screens and paper for pleasure reading. For textbook reading, students take longer to read on screens, although comprehension is about the same. (Daniel & Willingham, 2012).

The article, like all the pieces I’ve seen on this topic, is short on data and long on individual’s impressions. For example, teachers aver that students can no longer read long novels. Well, if we’re swapping stories, I (and most of my classmates) had a hard time with Faulkner and Joyce back in the early ‘80’s, when I was an English major.

The truth is probably that the brain is simply not adaptable enough for such a radical change. Yes, the brain changes as a consequence of experience, but there are likely limits to this change, a point made by both Steve Pinker and Roger Schank when commenting on this issue. If our ability to deploy attention or to comprehend language processes were to undergo substantial change, the consequences would cascade through the entire cognitive system, and so the brain is probably too conservative for large-scale change.

For example, there’s a lot of overlap in the processes of reading and the processes used for understanding spoken speech—processes that assign syntactic roles to words. Do we see any evidence that people are having a harder time understanding spoken language? Or does the problem lie in the mental processes that build understanding of larger blocks of language, as when we’re comprehending a story? If so, habitual Web users should have a hard time understanding complex narratives not just when they read, but in television and movies. No one should have watched The Sopranos, with its complicated, interweaving plotlines.

A more plausible possibility is that we’re not less capable of reading complex prose, but less willing to put in the work. Our criterion for concluding “this is boring. This is not paying off” has been lowered because the Web makes it so easy to find something else to read, watch, or listen to. (I explore the possibility in some detail in my upcoming book, Raising a Reader in an Age of Distraction.) If I’m right, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that our brains are not being deep-fried by the Web; we can still read deeply and think carefully. The bad news is that we don’t want to.

Reference

Daniel, D. B. & Willingham, D. T. (2012). Electronic textbooks: Why the rush? Science, 335, 1569-1571.