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Reading can be summarized by explaining a number of processes:

1. Perceptual processing
2. Word recognition
3. Syntactic processing
4. Semantic processing
5. Metalinguistic processing
6. Comprehension

These processes are best described in a developmental framework, describing how the processes emerge through a child's development. The processes accumulate with age and some continue to develop well into adulthood.

Perceptual processes

From infancy perceptual processes develop. These include the ability to transform sound and light waves and sound waves into meaningful chunks of information. These abilities will be affected by the development of the visual and auditory systems. Being unable to see or hear will drastically affect the development of reading skills as any shortage in either of these areas will respectively reduce their development.

Perceptual processing begins at the rods and cones situated in the fovea of the eye (see figure 1). This is where light is transformed into electrical signals that can be processed by the brain. It is situated in the center of the retina. Immediately surrounding the fovea is the parafovea and beyond that is the periphery. Both fovea and parafovea are crucial to reading with the parafovea picking up surface information such as letter shape, word shape, and spacing/word length, while the fovea is where the words are identified through their letters. The parafovea primes the brain with surface information just before the meaning is processed. Often parafoveal information is enough to recognize a word. When the context suggests that a certain word will follow and the parafovea has identified a word that is the same length and shape as the word predicted, the eyes will likely skip over the word, or words, and fixate on another word two or three to the right.

Figure 1 here

Degrees from Center of the Fovea

A cross-section of an eye, indicating the position of the fovea, a 1 to 2 degree retinal area with the best acuity. Surrounding the fovea is the parafovea, which has lower acuity. As the accompanying graph depicts, visual acuity decreases very rapidly as a letter is projected further from the fovea, in the parafovea, or periphery. One degree of retinal area is about 4-5 letters in width. (From Just & Carpenter, 1987)

Word Recognition

Words are recognized at two levels: at the letter level and at the word level. At the letter level individual graphemes (letters) are identified and transformed into their phonemic equivalent (their sound). The early reader (4-5 yrs) uses only grapheme to phoneme correspondencel, having to sound out words in order to string the individual sounds into a meaningful word. Two skills precede this. First, knowing the those graphic representations are letters and secondly that string of letters (words) correspond to spoken words. These skills are acquired through observation: being read too. It is often observed in early readers, their mimicing the act of reading while not actually reading the words.

Young readers (5-7 yrs), after learning that letters represent sounds (phonemic awareness), begin to associate letters with sounds, then learn to blend sounds together, or segment whole words into their individual sounds (see Table 1 for a list of the 40 English phonemes). These are the processes that are addressed in phonics reading programs, and is arguably the way early instruction in reading should occur. It is believed that up to 90% of those with reading disabilities have a deficit in phonemic processing.

In parallel, a child also learns the shape of words. This is observed when a child can tell you what a word is but can't spell it or sound it out with its individual phonemes. This is the process addressed in whole word reading programs, and is arguably the way learning should proceed once phonemic awareness has sufficiently developed, particularly for learning exception words. It has been suggested that about 10 % of those with a reading disability have a deficit in this area.

Table 1

40 English phonemes

(from Fromkin & Rodman 1993)

Intermediate readers (7 - 12), with a strong grasp of phonetics, continue to develop their whole word recognition skills through exposure to print. Words that are read many many times become recognized by their shape. Their shape is associated with a group of sounds. By 12 a child is highly skilled in both phonetic and orthographic (whole word) skills.

Beyond 12, children learn of more advanced skills such as story grammars, writing for an audience, style, and other metalinguistic skills that go beyond word recognition and are discussed in the section below on Metalinguistic-processing .

Syntactic processing

Syntactic processing involves the ability to identify clauses, noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP), prepositional phrases, adjective (Adj) , articles (Art), nouns (N), and verbs (V), and assemble them in syntactically acceptable sentences (S).

Syntactic development is measured by the mean length of utterance (MLU), which is based on the average length of a child's sentences scored on transcripts of spontaneous speech. Each unit of meaning is recorded which include root words such as "want" and inflections such as "ed" (with the exception of compound words which are classified as one morpheme). Sometime during the second year after a child has about 50 words in his/her vocabulary multiple word utterances begin to appear. These utterances are telegraphic, usually without articles, prepositions, inflection, or any other grammatical modifications. Children also begin to distinguish between actors, objects, and verbs at this time. The MLU is closely related to both cognitive and social development, depending on working memory capacity which increases during childhood, and the language used by those around them. Adults, and particularly mothers, tend to talk to the child's level of ability, also speaking in short telegraphic phrase to younger children and increasing the length of their utterances as a child becomes more able to process larger chunks of information, more complex sentence and meaning structure.

By the time children are ready to read they are quite adept with syntactic rules in spoken language and seem to have learned them without effort. They can easily string together a words into a grammatically correct sentence. The structure of syntax is described in Figure 2. Sentences are broken down into noun and verb phrases, which are in turn broken down into their constituent parts. The example in Figure 2 is a simple one. These phrase structure trees can be very complex, though children have little difficulty creating the sentences to accompany them.

Figure 2 here

Phrase structure tree

(From Fromkin & Rodman, 1993)

Semantic processing

Semantic processing is developing even before an infant begins to use words. Words initially begin with a single meaning then become more rich as the child is exposed to a wide range of words and experiences, some of which may be the same but used in different contexts, and some that are related to each other. Meaning is assembled in semantic networks in which words are inserted in classes. A dog, for example, may first represent a class of animals with four legs; a child may initially refer to a cat as "dog". Later these animals will be distinguished from each other and two classes will be form.

These semantic networks, or schemata as some have called them, include more than just linguistic information, they also include images, personal experience, and declarative knowledge (eg. knowing that a dog has a keen sense of smell because of being told so). They may also contain tactual and kinesthetic information, cognitive processing strategies, and metacognitive strategies. These make up skills, or networks of procedural knowledge. Semantic networks form relatively late as compared to the other aspects of language and continue to develop throughout life as new things are learned. The development of these networks can be identified through word association tasks, as associated words tend to differ with age.

Meanings within a semantic network are activated by each other, referred to by some as, "spreading activation". Spreading activation occurs when a particular word is encountered that is related to another. For example, when the word "fall" is encountered, semantically related words such as slip, trip, and autumn are activated to a certain extent, perhaps not to the extent that it enters working memory, but to the extent that if a child was asked "What can you do on an ice rink?", they may say "slip" before the more common response "skate". Similarly, if a child, or adult for that matter, is told to say the first word that comes to mind when they hear the word "doctor", the most closely related word in their semantic network of meanings will be activated rather than some obscurely related or unrelated term. These words may differ depending on the age of the child and thus demonstrate the extent of the child's knowledge of the word; a young child might say "sucker", while an older child or adult might say "nurse", or perhaps "hospital".

Spreading activation helps readers predict the words that will follow based on what has already been read. As described in the section on word recognition within the parafovea, if the predicted word based on spreading activation of a semantic network matches that of the word shape and length information coming in from the parafovea, the word is often skipped over. Figure 3 represents a small piece of the meaning associated with "bird", representing both typical/atypical instances of the class birds, and typical/atypical properties of those instances of bird. Study the semantic network below and develop "feel" for the strengths of the relationships. Add to it. How would the words cat, human, and automobile affect the spreading activation of meaning you are experiencing right now? Can you picture a senario with the: bird, cat, human, automobile? In retrospect, how might the spreading activation of meaning differed if I had just offered you a cat, and a human to trigger the retrieval of meaning?

Figure 3 here.

A portion of the semantic network for the word "bird". Three effects are demonstrated in the lines and positioning. First, those more typical of a class are joined to the class by shorter lines (red lines- A robin is a more typical bird than a chicken). Second, properties of those instances of the class birds that are most important in the hierarchy of characteristics, are connected by shorter lines (black lines- A robin is less likely to be associated with "eggs" than a chicken is).

Adapted from Ashcraft (1989)

Metalinguistic-processing

Metalinguistic awareness makes it possible for children to think about language, understand what words are, and define them, or knowing of language as an object. It begins to develop gradually at a young age, through the middle school years, and continues to develop well into adulthood. It involves the ability to use humour, metaphor, and irony, for example. It also makes possible the use of story grammars, genre, audience, and styles, as reflected in an individual's writing, to help with comprehension while reading. These are skills, procedures, and strategies at a thinker's disposal. The ability to choose those that are appropriate, based on a given situation, is called metacognition. The effective use of skills, procedures, and strategies associated with language involves metalinguistic processing.

Comprehension

Comprehension involves the use of all of the above processes, especially semantic processing. The act of comprehension is essentially the linking of new knowledge to old knowledge, adding new links and modifying the strength of connections between nodes. In the early stages of learning to read, comprehension is hampered by limited: capacity of processing space, attention, prior knowledge, and automization of processes (procedures) -- all part of skilled reading.