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Why is learning to read a hard task for some children?
Author(s) -
Lundber Ingva
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9450.393071
Subject(s) - psychology , reading (process) , literacy , learning to read , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , remedial education , socialization , cognition , phonological awareness , phonemic awareness , reading disability , developmental psychology , dyslexia , linguistics , mathematics education , pedagogy , philosophy , management , neuroscience , economics
In this brief review of some of my research on reading disability, I argue that a child’s development into literacy has two major ontogenetic roots, one involving early informal literacy socialization and one related to phonological awareness. Although failure in reading acquisition might be a question of cultural deprivation, the dynamic interaction between genetic dispositions and environment must be acknowledged, especially in a society providing rich sources of print exposure. The crucial transition in literacy development involves a step from implicit to explicit control of the phonemic units of language. When the cipher of the alphabetic system is understood the child is equipped with a powerful instrument for self teaching. A primary source of reading disability is then related to problems of segmenting the speech stream into phonemic units. The poor functioning of the phonological module seems to be a circumscribed deficit not related to general cognitive ability. The causal and reciprocal relationship between phonological awareness and learning to read has been demonstrated in my research over 20 years. Some of these studies are briefly reviewed in this article. The preventive and remedial implications of the findings are rather obvious.