Converging Methods For Understanding Reading And Dyslexia

This book offers an interdisciplinary look at the acquisition, loss, and remediation of normal reading processes.

This book outlines and critiques international strategies and programmes designed to address difficulties in literacy development. The high-profile team of contributors consider teaching programmes which operate at family, school, pupil and teacher levels. They argue that school is not the only legitimate location for literacy education, and show how difficulties in literacy can be addressed sequentially, both in and out of the school context. Issues addressed include: *the dilemmas facing practitioners in choosing between multiple approaches to practice *the factors which must be addressed in strategies which operate at the level of the family and the community *how to ensure the school can support programmes designed to improve literacy learning *how to put theory into practice in programmes designed for use with individual students *the teacher as 'reflective practitioner' - developing professional practice which effectively raises literacy achievement. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students, teachers, researchers, educational professionals and policymakers who are looking for practical strategies to address difficulties in literacy development. This reader forms the basis of the Open University's Difficulties in Literacy Development course, and is ideal for similar courses nationally and internationally.

Reading is one of the most sophisticated demonstrations of human pattern recognition and symbolic processing skill. Skilled readers effortlessly comprehend written text at rates of at least 300 words per minute, despite the complex interactions between perceptual, cognitive and memory processes required for effective comprehension. Understanding how we achieve this remarkable feat has been a focus of investigation since the birth of experimental psychology. Over the last two decades, visual word recognition has been at the forefront of developments in cognitive science. This book brings together many of the most influential contributors to these developments to reflect on current issues in the cognitive science of lexical processing and the methods required for further progress. The first section focuses on computational models. Written words provide a fertile context for large-scale modeling and the domain of lexical retrieval has become a test-bed for evaluating competing theoretical frameworks. The later sections draw upon cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science and neuroscience to elaborate critical theoretical issues and to develop novel research tools. From Inkmarks to Ideas provides advanced students and researchers with a comprehensive overview of the critical theoretical and empirical controversies in current research on the cognitive science of lexical processing and reading.

Learning to read may be the most complex cognitive operation that children are expected to master, and the latest research in cognitive development has offered important insights into how children succeed or fail at this task. The Cognitive Development of Reading and Reading Comprehension is a multidisciplinary, evidence-based resource for teachers and researchers that examines reading comprehension from a cognitive development perspective, including the principal theories and methods used in the discipline. The book combines research into basic cognitive processes—genetics, perception, memory, executive functioning, and language—with an investigation of the effects that context and environment have on literacy outcomes, making clear how factors such as health, family life, community, policy, and ecology can influence children’s cognitive development.

Most studies on reading have been conducted with English-speaking subjects. It is crucial to also examine studies conducted in different languages, in order to highlight which aspects of reading acquisition and dyslexia appear to be language-specific, and which are universal. Reading Acquisition and Developmental Dyslexia sheds new light on dyslexia and its relationship with reading acquisition, presenting two unique advancements in this area. Looking at studies conducted in different languages, the prerequisites of reading acquisition are examined, and the findings from studies of skilled adult readers are presented. The manifestations of developmental dyslexia and the main contemporary explanations for it are outlined, providing an in-depth, well researched discussion of the topic. The authors conclude by offering a new framework which could explain both reading acquisition and developmental dyslexia. A fascinating book offering a unique insight into the topic of dyslexia, it will be of great interest to students and lecturers in cognitive psychology, educational psychology, and psycholinguistics, as well as those with a more everyday involvement with the disorder such as speech and language therapists.

You can hardly open a paper or read an academic journal without some attempt to explain an aspect of human behaviour or experience by reference to neuroscience, biological or evolutionary processes. This ‘biologising’ has had rather a free ride until now, being generally accepted by the public at large. However, there is a growing number of scholars who are challenging the assumption that we are little more than our bodies and animal origins. This volume brings together a review of these emerging critiques expressed by an international range of senior academics from across the social sciences. Their arguments are firmly based in the empirical, scientific tradition. They show the lack of logic or evidence for many ‘biologising’ claims, as well as the damaging effects these biological assumptions can have on issues such as dealing with dyslexia or treating alcoholism. This important book, originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science, contributes to a crucial debate on what it means to be human. "This collection of articles by David Canter and his colleagues, rigorously argued and richly informative [...] are of immense importance. It is astonishing that, as Canter puts it in his brilliant overview of biologising trends [...] there are those in the humanities who need to be reminded "that human beings can talk and interact with each other, generating cultures and societies that have an existence that cannot be reduced to their mere mechanical parts". Professor Raymond Tallis FRCP FMedSci DLitt LittD in the Preface.

Dyslexia and Literacy provides a comprehensive, practical introduction for all professionals seeking an understanding of dyslexia in children. Divided into four parts, the book firstly introduces the various theoretical perspectives and follows this up with identification and assessment techniques with an emphasis on practical, classroom related issues. The third part of the text covers topics related to the school curriculum and a final section covers issues that relate to the learning process.

This is an edited book based on papers presented at a 2003 invitee-only conference under the sponsorship of the Merrill Advanced Studies Center of the University of Kansas. The participants were prominent scholars in the areas of language and reading, and have research programs funded by NIH and other sources. The purpose of the gathering was to discuss theoretical issues and research findings concerning the relationship between developmental language and reading disabilities, specifically looking at neurological, behavioral, and genetic factors. In addition, it discussed other factors contributing to reading difficulties in the middle elementary school years through adolescence and literacy outcomes for children with early language impairments, and how these problems relate to children with dyslexia. The Foreword is written by Reid Lyon, Branch Chief, Child Development and Behavior Branch, NICHD-National Institutes of Health. This book appeals to scholars in the areas of language disorders and reading disabilities, as well as to practicing speech-language pathologists, special educators, and reading specialists. It may also be used in graduate courses designed as seminars in either language disorders or reading disabilities in schools of communication disorders, as well as schools of education--especially special education departments.