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12 - First impressions: What four readers can teach us

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Benita A. Blachman
Edited by
Kurt W. Fischer ,
Jane Holmes Bernstein  and
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Benita A. Blachman
Affiliation:
Trustee Professor of Education and Psychology Syracuse University
Kurt W. Fischer
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Jane Holmes Bernstein
Affiliation:
The Children's Hospital, Boston
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Summary

Overview: Watching real children read reminds us what we do and do not yet understand about the reading process, especially how little is known about the underlying processing deficits that cause dyslexic behavioral patterns. To ground this point, Blachman compares the three dyslexic readers to Jonathan, an effective reader, and stresses the relation between accuracy and fluency in the production of functional reading. While much neuropsychological research focuses on the processes underlying reading accuracy, methods to remediate poor fluency need attention in research and practice (see Wolf and Ashby, this volume). From an educational perspective, children must combine accuracy and fluency in order to improve their comprehension and their comfort with reading.

The Editors

What do you see when you watch four young boys read? To prepare for the conference on which this volume is based, speakers were asked, essentially, to reflect on this question. We were asked to view a videotape of four 9-year-old boys, one typical reader and three poor readers, and use the profiles of these children as the centerpiece for our remarks. The videotape was divided into two sections, each showing the children engaged in a series of diagnostic tests, and speakers were asked to respond to one section or the other. I was asked to respond to the section that included measures of rapid naming (Denckla & Rudel, 1976) and measures of isolated word reading (reading words and non-words from lists) (Test of Word Reading Efficiency, Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999; The Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery–Revised, Woodcock & Johnson, 1989).

Type
Chapter
Information
Mind, Brain, and Education in Reading Disorders , pp. 217 - 226
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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References

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