The Nature of Phonological Processing and Its Causal Role in the Acquisition of Reading Skills

2.3kCitations
Citations of this article
741Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.
Get full text

Abstract

Three bodies of research that have developed in relative isolation center on each of three kinds of phonological processing: phonological awareness, awareness of the sound structure of language; phonological recoding in lexical access, recoding written symbols into a sound-based representational system to get from the written word to its lexical referent; and phonetic recoding in working memory, recoding written symbols into a sound-based representational system to maintain them efficiently in working memory. In this review we integrate these bodies of research and address the interdependent issues of the nature of phonological abilities and their causal roles in the acquisition of reading skills. Phonological ability seems to be general across tasks that purport to measure the three kinds of phonological processing, and this generality apparently is independent of general cognitive ability. However, the generality of phonological ability is not complete, and there is an empirical basis for distinguishing phonological awareness and phonetic recoding in working memory. Our review supports a causal role for phonological awareness in learning to read, and suggests the possibility of similar causal roles for phonological recoding in lexical access and phonetic recoding in working memory. Most researchers have neglected the probable causal role of learning to read in the development of phonological skills. It is no longer enough to ask whether phonological skills play a causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. The question now is which aspects of phonological processing (e.g., awareness, recoding in lexical access, recoding in working memory) are causally related to which aspects of reading (e.g., word recognition, word analysis, sentence comprehension), at which point in their codevelopment, and what are the directions of these causal relations? © 1987 American Psychological Association.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Wagner, R. K., & Torgesen, J. K. (1987). The Nature of Phonological Processing and Its Causal Role in the Acquisition of Reading Skills. Psychological Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.101.2.192

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free