Duff, F. & Hulme, C.
University of York, UK
This paper presents two experiments that focus on the relationship between oral language skills and learning to read single words in 5- to 6-year-old children. According to theories of reading development, both phonological and semantic knowledge about a word should predict how easily children learn to read it. However, few developmental studies have considered item-level relationships when assessing the impact of linguistic knowledge on learning to read. Furthermore, in relation to oral pre-exposure paradigms, it remains unclear as to whether semantics exerts any influence on learning beyond the effect of phonology. In Experiment 1 children learned to read real but unfamiliar words varying in spelling-sound consistency and imageability. Consistency affected performance on early trials while imageability affected performance on later trials. Individual differences among children in phonemic awareness on the trained words were related to learning, and knowledge of a word’s meaning predicted how well it was learnt. These results confirm, across participants, the importance of phonological skills for learning to read; but crucially suggest that within-participants, item-level semantic knowledge facilitates learning to read single words. In Experiment 2, phonological and semantic knowledge of nonwords was manipulated prior to word learning. Familiarization with a word’s pronunciation facilitated word learning, but there was no additional benefit from being taught to associate a meaning with a nonword. In view of Experiment 1, it is argued that semantic knowledge does influence the process of learning to read single words, but that more naturalistic methodologies may be needed in order to detect this effect in oral pre-exposure paradigms.