Reading Ability and Utilization of Orthographic Structure in Reading

A perceptual-recognition task was used to assess whether utilization of orthographic structure in letter recognition varies with reading ability. Anagrams of words were made to create strings that orthogonally combined frequency and regularity measures of orthographic structure. These strings and the original words were used as test stimuli in a letter-recognition task. Good and poor college readers showed equally large effects of orthographic structure on task accuracy, whereas poor sixth-grade readers did not utilize orthographic structure to the same degree as very good sixth-grade readers. To facilitate the teaching of orthographic structure, some of the important constraints in written English and various games for teaching these constraints are presented. One of the primary concerns of educators is the wide range of reading ability across both child and adult populations. Good and poor readers have been shown to differ in performance on a variety of general tasks, but until recently little attempt has been made to explore how children of different reading abilities might differ in basic wordrecognition processes. If poor readers reveal fundamental deficits in certain recognition processes, then instruction for the poor readers could be directed at these processes.