POOR READERS DECODING SKILLS - EFFECTS OF TRAINING WITH LIMITED EXPOSURE DURATION

THERE IS ample evidence that a failure to decode words rapidly lies at the heart of reading difficulty. To improve poor readers' decoding speed, practice under time pressure is often recommended. The assumption that such training is better than a conventional type of training is addressed experimentally in this study. Young poor readers (mean age 9;11 years) received training in decoding monosyllabic pseudowords. One group saw the pseudowords briefly; another group practiced without time pressure. A third group received no training. Limiting the exposure duration appears to increase processing speed on trained and untrained material without costs in precision. The finding that gains in processing speed are length-independent has significant implications for decoding models. The observation that training without time pressure appears to slow down word processing speed is important for remedial practice.