Biomedical subjects

P H Seymour

Publications and source records attributed to P H Seymour.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

A small-to-large unit progression in metaphonological awareness and reading?

The paper reports a series of studies of reading and metaphonological processing by children in their second year in primary school (aged 6 years). An earlier study had established that, in the first year of learning, performance was characterized by a small-unit approach in which graphemes and phonemes were emphasized. In the second year, reading became more sensitive to the frequencies of rime structures in the lexicon. Capacity to generate word analogies for nonwords also showed increasing commitment to rime-based responses, and this trend was strongly linked to reading age. The present results suggest that a small-unit approach to reading is augmented by a large-unit approach as development proceeds. This trend was reflected in performance on a test of explicit phonological awareness. When asked to report the segment of sound shared by two spoken words, Primary 1 children were poor in reporting shared rimes but relatively adept in reporting shared phonemes. During Primary 2 there was an improvement in ability to report shared rimes, and this trend was also related to reading age. These results are discussed in relation to the influence of instruction and the nature of the orthography in determining the course of reading development.

Association Learning↗

PubMed2000

Socio-economic differences in foundation-level literacy.

The foundation literacy skills of children from differing socio-economic backgrounds were investigated in a cross-sectional study. The children were aged between 4 and 8 years and attended Nursery or Primary 1, 2 or 3 classes. Low socioeconomic status (SES) was associated with impairments for chronological age in letter knowledge as well as in both logographic and alphabetic foundation components. There was also an effect on metaphonological++ skill. However, once the SES groups were equated for reading age, high and low SES performance was indistinguishable. The results suggest that delayed acquisition of foundation literacy skills is traceable to a delay in acquiring letter-sound knowledge. Implications for intervention are discussed in the context of the foundation literacy framework.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1997

How important are rhyme and analogy in beginning reading?

Current debate over the influence of phonological awareness on early reading development is polarised around small-unit (phoneme) processing and large-unit (onset-rime) processing. These opposing theories were contrasted by assessing the impact of pre-school phonological skills on reading amongst children experiencing their first year of formal instruction by a mixed method. Those beginning readers who could decode nonwords were found to have accomplished this by employing their letter-sound knowledge rather than by making analogies based on familiar rime units. Children displayed this pattern of performance regardless of their pre-school rhyming skills. Further investigations revealed that explicit awareness of onset and rime units was poor, even amongst children whose implicit rhyming skills were excellent. This evidence, together with the children's knowledge of orthographic units, was consistent with the view that letter-sound correspondences rather than onset or rime units formed the basis of their first attempts to utilise phonology in reading. The findings are discussed with reference to instructional influences on early reading and phonological awareness.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed1987

Individual cognitive analysis of competent and impaired reading.

A cognitive model of basic reading functions is described together with experimental procedures that may be used to investigate the efficiency and operation of its components in individual subjects. Illustrative results obtained from competent and impaired readers aged about 11 years are presented. Competent reading, defined in terms of efficiency within a morphemic route to phonology, may be achieved despite quite marked inefficiencies in adjacent systems, including a grapheme-phoneme translation process. Both these functions are typically impaired in poor readers, although the balance of relative impairment may vary. The index of relative impairment may be used to define subtypes of disability, referred to as phonological dyslexia and morphemic dyslexia. However, this procedure did not identify groups of subjects who shared a common set of processing characteristics. Some theoretical and diagnostic implications are discussed.

Child↗

PubMed1978