Project LexPro
Processes of Reading and Methods of Intervention in Dyslexic Readers
The project focused on procedures of reading of struggling readers in the 5th and 6th grades. Two main questions were examined: 1. What are the underlying processes of reading in dyslexic children beyond the early years of reading acquisition. 2. How can these processes be enhanced or changed.
The purpose of this project was to examine processes of reading in dyslexic children studying in the fifth and sixth grades, and how these processes can be enhanced or changed. Developmental studies of reading acquisition indicate that reading progresses from procedures of decoding each grapheme into its appropriate sound to the fast identification of larger orthographic units (e.g. whole words or morphemes) based on their stored representations in memory, also referred to as the mental lexicon. The ability to access the mental lexicon quickly has an important role in the development of efficient reading. The first aim of this project was to characterize the processes applied by readers of German as they move from elementary school to junior high school, and to examine in what way the processes applied by struggling readers differ from the ones applied by skilled readers. The second aim was to examine whether the imposing of time-constraints on the presentation of texts (based of the work of Breznitz, 2006) would encourage struggling readers to apply more efficient procedures in reading. Together, these examinations were thought to provide the background for the development of a training program aimed at enhancing the fast access to the mental lexicon in reading.
Selected Publication
Bar-Kochva, I. & Hasselhorn, M. (2015). In search of methods enhancing fluency in reading: An examination of the relations between time constraints and processes of reading in readers of German. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 140, 140-157.
Funding
