Early Intervention for Reading Disabilities: Teaching the Alphabet Principle in a Connectionist Framework

• Published in: Journal of learning disabilities 1999-11, Vol.32 (6), p.491-503
• Main Authors: Berninger, Virginia W., Abbott, Robert D., Zook, Dori, Ogier, Stacy, Lemos-Britton, Zenia, Brooksher, Rebecca
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age Factors; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Children; Computer simulation; Connectionist models; Control Groups; Dyslexia - rehabilitation; Early intervention; Early intervention programmes; Educational psychology; Elementary education; Evaluation; Grade 1; Grapheme phoneme correspondence; Humans; Individual differences; Intelligence; Intervention; Learning; Learning disabilities; Linguistics - methods; Medical sciences; Naming; Orthography; Phoneme Grapheme Correspondence; Phonemes; Phonetics; Phonics; Phonology; Primary Education; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reading achievement; Reading comprehension; Reading Difficulties; Reading disabilities; Reading disabled young children; Reading Improvement; Reading Instruction; Reading Strategies; Remedial Teaching - methods; Sound; Special education; Special education. Orthophony; Spelling; Spoken language; Standardized Tests; Teachers; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Treatments; Tutoring; Variance analysis; Verbal intelligence; Words
• ISSN: 0022-2194; 1538-4780
• DOI: 10.1177/002221949903200604

Forty-eight children referred by teachers at the end of first grade for difficulty in reading were randomly assigned to three treatments, all of which modeled connections between written and spoken words but did not teach phonics rules, for eight half-hour individual tutoring sessions. The children were taught 48 words of varying orders of spelling-sound predictability (Venezky, 1995) using a whole-word method, for making connections between a word's name and its constituent letters; a subword method, for making connections between each color-coded spelling unit and its corresponding phonemes; or a combined whole-word and subword method. Regardless of the method used, children improved reliably on standardized reading measures and the taught words, showing that they could make connections between written and spoken words at the whole word and subword levels, even when rules were not taught. By posttest, the subword method showed a reliable advantage on a standardized test of real word reading. Knowledge of sounds associated with both multiletter and single-letter spelling units predicted reading achievement. Order of spelling-sound predictability (easy, moderate, difficult) was correlated with standardized measures of reading at pretest and posttest, and the magnitude of the relationship increased as a result of the intervention. Individual differences in verbal intelligence, rapid automatized naming, and phonological and orthographic skills predicted response to the intervention. Instructional implications of the results are discussed.