Phonological processing skills continue to influence text reading fluency in adolescents

Psycholinguists from the Center for Language and Brain found that phonological processing skills continue to influence text reading fluency in 15-to-18-year-old adolescents. This finding argues the long-held belief that in this age group the phonological processing skills are not involved in reading. The study was published in PLOS One.

Phoneme – is the smallest phonetic unit that helps to distinguish one word from another. Previously, it was stated that phonological processing skills (i.e., the ability to operate with phonemes) are required for early stages of reading development. However, researchers from the Center for Language and Brain (Moscow, Saint Petersburg) questioned this hypothesis and conducted the study with 161 adolescent participants (8–11 grade). 

The participants performed several tasks: text reading task, word and pseudoword reading tasks, phonological task. In the phonological test adolescents were asked to change sound in a pseudoword: for instance, they were asked to change sound /n/ to /n'/ in a pseudoword "chichina". These tasks allow assessing how successfully adolescents revise unfamiliar units of sounds and perform mental operations with sounds in non-existing words. 

The results of the study showed that phonological processing skills still influence text reading fluency in adolescents. The better adolescents operate with phonemes, the faster they read coherent texts. The same association was not evident in word and pseudoword reading fluency. The authors of the study propose that text reading is a more cognitive demanding task that involves multiple (including phonological) cognitive processes in its successful completion, while the word-level reading is mostly automated in adolescents. 

Authors of the study also investigated the role of attitude to reading in adolescents. It was found that their attitude to reading (i.e., whether they like to read or not) significantly influences text reading fluency. This predictor explained a bigger share of variance in the text reading test results than the phonological test did. The assessment of attitude to reading was conducted using the specific questionnaire. The results revealed that emotional involvement plays a crucial part in reading skills development. 

Moreover, this study contains first normative data on a phonological test for adolescents attending 8-11 grades. The resulted indicators can be used by speech therapists and neuropsychologists to detect the risk of phonological deficit in older children.

We were the first who published the normative data for the phonological test "Changing sound in a pseudoword" for 8-11-graders. This test is a part of a phonological test battery RuToPP, which was developed by Svetlana Dorofeeva and colleagues in the Center for Language and Brain (Moscow). We hope that these normative scores will help researchers and practitioners while working with speech impairments in this understudied age group." 

Svetlana Alexeeva, project administrator, head of the Center for Language and Brain, Saint Petersburg 

The authors also mentioned that their results are particularly important for understanding the nature of dyslexia in adolescents. Though this diagnosis is more coherent in primary school children, the reading difficulties can be evident in later years as well. 

"Adolescents with dyslexia rarely receive timely and effective intervention due to the limited attention to their difficulties and due to the lack of age-appropriate complex diagnostic instruments, – says Tatian Eremicheva, neurolinguist and the co-author of the study. – In our study we showed that reading mechanisms in adolescents are less automatized comparing to the adults. Therefore, it is important to consider the development of phonological processing skills and to raise the interest in reading while working with adolescents."

Researchers recommend including the tasks for developing phonological processing skills in the intervention programme. Especially those that require complex manipulations with phonemes. Moreover, it is important to consider the emotional side of reading – to help adolescents with finding pleasure in reading, maintain the reading motivation and interest in books. Such a complex intervention can lead to success in overcoming the difficulties with reading.

This research was an output of the Basic Research Program in the HSE University.