Dyslexia,previously known as word blindness,is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words,reading quickly,writing words,"sounding out" words in the head,pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. The difficulties are involuntary,and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn. People with dyslexia have higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),developmental language disorders,and difficulties with numbers.
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind and brain;that is,the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire,use,comprehend,and produce language.
In the field of psychology,cognitive dissonance is described as the mental disturbance people feel when their beliefs and actions are inconsistent and contradictory,ultimately encouraging some change to align better and reduce this dissonance. Relevant items of information include peoples' actions,feelings,ideas,beliefs,values,and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory,when an action or idea is psychologically inconsistent with the other,people do all in their power to change either so that they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived,wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
The testing effect suggests long-term memory is increased when part of the learning period is devoted to retrieving information from memory. It is different from the more general practice effect,defined in the APA Dictionary of Psychology as "any change or improvement that results from practice or repetition of task items or activities."
Reading for special needs has become an area of interest as the understanding of reading has improved. Teaching children with special needs how to read was not historically pursued due to perspectives of a Reading Readiness model. This model assumes that a reader must learn to read in a hierarchical manner such that one skill must be mastered before learning the next skill. This approach often led to teaching sub-skills of reading in a decontextualized manner. This style of teaching made it difficult for children to master these early skills,and as a result,did not advance to more advanced literacy instruction and often continued to receive age-inappropriate instruction.
In cognitive psychology,the word superiority effect (WSE) refers to the phenomenon that people have better recognition of letters presented within words as compared to isolated letters and to letters presented within nonword strings. Studies have also found a WSE when letter identification within words is compared to letter identification within pseudowords and pseudohomophones.
In psychology and neuroscience,memory span is the longest list of items that a person can repeat back in correct order immediately after presentation on 50% of all trials. Items may include words,numbers,or letters. The task is known as digit span when numbers are used. Memory span is a common measure of working memory and short-term memory. It is also a component of cognitive ability tests such as the WAIS. Backward memory span is a more challenging variation which involves recalling items in reverse order.
Robert Allen Bjork is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California,Los Angeles. His research focuses on human learning and memory and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction and training. He is the creator of the directed forgetting paradigm. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
High frequency sight words are commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight,so that they can automatically recognize these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode. Sight words were introduced after whole language fell out of favor with the education establishment.
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters,symbols,etc.,especially by sight or touch.
Neurodevelopmental framework for learning,like all frameworks,is an organizing structure through which learners and learning can be understood. Intelligence theories and neuropsychology inform many of them. The framework described below is a neurodevelopmental framework for learning. The neurodevelopmental framework was developed by the All Kinds of Minds Institute in collaboration with Dr. Mel Levine and the University of North Carolina's Clinical Center for the Study of Development and Learning. It is similar to other neuropsychological frameworks,including Alexander Luria's cultural-historical psychology and psychological activity theory,but also draws from disciplines such as speech-language pathology,occupational therapy,and physical therapy. It also shares components with other frameworks,some of which are listed below. However,it does not include a general intelligence factor,since the framework is used to describe learners in terms of profiles of strengths and weaknesses,as opposed to using labels,diagnoses,or broad ability levels. This framework was also developed to link with academic skills,such as reading and writing. Implications for education are discussed below as well as the connections to and compatibilities with several major educational policy issues.
The dual-route theory of reading aloud was first described in the early 1970s. This theory suggests that two separate mental mechanisms,or cognitive routes,are involved in reading aloud,with output of both mechanisms contributing to the pronunciation of a written stimulus.
Dynaread Special Education Corporation is a provider of dyslexia remediation services specifically designed for older struggling readers.
The word frequency effect is a psychological phenomenon where recognition times are faster for words seen more frequently than for words seen less frequently. Word frequency depends on individual awareness of the tested language. The phenomenon can be extended to different characters of the word in non-alphabetic languages such as Chinese.
James A. Russell is an American psychologist whose work focuses on emotion. In 2009,Russell was ranked 35th in terms of citation impact in social psychology.
Max Coltheart is an Australian cognitive scientist who specialises in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuropsychiatry.
Kate Nation is an experimental psychologist and expert on language and literacy development in school age children. She is Professor of Experimental Psychology and Fellow of St. John's College of the University of Oxford,where she directs the ReadOxford project and the Language and Cognitive Development Research Group.
The simple view of reading is a scientific theory that a student's ability to understand written words depends on how well they sound out (decode) the words and understand the meaning of those words. Specifically,their reading comprehension can be predicted by multiplying their skill in decoding the written words by their ability to understand the meaning of those words. It is expressed in this equation:
Maria Fernanda Ferreira is a cognitive psychologist known for empirical investigations in psycholinguistics and language processing. Ferreira is Professor of Psychology and the Principal investigator of the Ferreira Lab at University of California,Davis.
Silent reading is reading done silently,or without speaking the words being read.
