Relating Decoding and Fluency Development in RD Children

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Recent intervention studies designed to improve word-level recognition processes in children with serious reading disabilities (RD) have demonstrated that systematic instruction in phonemic awareness (PA) and decoding skills results in significant and lasting improvements in nonword decoding and to a somewhat lesser extent real word identification. However, generalization of gains in PA and decoding skills to other aspects of reading acquisition, in particular reading fluency, has posed a much more serious problem for those attempting to improve the overall reading skills of children with RD. Until the relationship between decoding skill acquisition and the development of efficient sight word recognition processes and text reading fluency is clarified in RD children, it will be difficult to develop effective remediation programs that promote fluent reading of text and improved reading comprehension. Our intent in this proposed research is to collect pilot data designed to explore three possible explanations to account for the disassociation between decoding skill acquisition and the development of efficient sight word recognition and fluent text reading in children with phonologically-based RD. The first explanation to be explored is that a majority of decoding programs focus disproportionately on subword connections at the individual letter-phoneme level and this reduces the potential for redundant connections to form between orthographic and phonological subword units of a word. We hypothesize that decoding programs that promote redundant connections at multiple subword levels greatly increase the likelihood that new lexical entries will quickly gain autonomy in the lexicon, allowing rapid and automatic recognition. The second possible explanation is that other factors such as rapid automatized naming (RAN) speed control fluency development in children with RD. The third exploration is that phonological awareness and decoding skills are a necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of high quality lexical representations and fluent text reading. We intend to use the pilot data to inform more systematic explorations of the relation between decoding and reading fluency acquisition.