Developmental Psychology Quiz

Course Overview/Week 2: Interventions for Reading Difficulties

• The course covers cognition across the lifespan, focusing on interventions for reading difficulties in the classroom.
• Week 1 lectures include a course overview/handbook, and memory recap focusing on development throughout primary years.

Memory Recap

• Sensory memory stores sensory information briefly. It's passive and not affected by development after school age.
• Working memory is active and under control, encoding information phonetically (phonological loop) and visually (visuo-spatial sketchpad). It shows developmental trends related to primary years learning and education.
• Long-term memory, for meanings, encodes information in semantic form, showing development aligned with working memory.

Reading Difficulties

• Potential difficulties include sound categorization, memory, and comprehension.

Interventions

• Developmental psychology in education plays a crucial role in understanding the development of basic education stages in children.
• Understanding the cognitive skills that underpin literacy and numeracy can help develop interventions for children struggling with reading, writing and numbers.

Some Children Struggle to Read

• Understanding the underlying cognitive issues is crucial to develop effective interventions.
• Interventions can help identify and predict poor readers.
• It is important to fight stigma associated with reading difficulties.

Difficulties with Sound Categorization

• Poor readers often exhibit insensitivity to aspects of sound like rhyme and alliteration.
• Psychologists study young children to understand categorization of sounds through longitudinal and intervention studies.

Key Study: Bradley & Bryant (1983)

• A longitudinal study of 368 children aged 4-5 over three years.
• Initial testing included word recall, verbal IQ, and sound categorization. Followed up with IQ, Reading, and Spelling in later years.

Sound Categorization at T1

• Table 2 presents examples of categorisation tests and average scores across age groups. This data shows how sound categorization abilities develop.

Neale Reading Test (NARA)

• NARA, developed by Marie Neale, is used to assess reading ability.
• It involves graded passages that increase in difficulty, covering reading aspects including word recognition, vocabulary, and comprehension. A practical task/ test example includes comprehension of a simple story.

Schonell Spelling Test

• Spelling age is calculated by adding 5 to the number of correctly spelled words divided by 10; for example, 25 correctly spelled words divided by 10 yields 7.5 years of spelling age. This is a practical and common task based on word knowledge.

Findings: Longitudinal Study

• Children's ability to categorize sounds before reading significantly predicts reading and spelling performance 3 years later.
• This relationship is particularly strong in younger children.

Intervention Study

• 65 children with low-scoring standardized tests and difficulty categorizing sounds were divided into four groups.
• Group 1 received sound categorization training.
• Group 2 received sound categorization + letter identification training.
• Group 3 received conceptual categorization training (e.g., animals).
• Group 4 (the control group) received no training.
• Forty individual training sessions over two years.

Findings: Intervention Study

• Sound categorization can improve; focusing training on recognizing sounds is key. Tasks such as describing sounds and comparing words based on the beginning, middle or end sounds were used.
• There were notable improvements in reading, spelling, and maths for the groups involved that were trained compared to the control group.

Difficulties with Memory

• Categorizing sounds is not enough for reading; efficient learning (memory) of words and their meanings is essential.
• Words must first be effectively processed in working memory (specifically, the phonological loop) before entering long-term memory.

Phonological Loop

• A component of working memory. The phonological loop is vital for processing and storing auditory and verbal information, important in listening comprehension, speaking, reading, following complex instructions, and problem-solving.
• Critical for phonological awareness.

Word Recall

• Word recall improves with age, parallel to working memory development.
• This improvement in recall is due to a combination of language abilities and faster rehearsal of words.

Key Study: Gathercole & Baddeley (1993)

• The study investigated the components of working memory that are deficient in language-impaired children aged 6-10.
• A non-word repetition task, where participants repeated nonwords (e.g., blonterstaping) of varying length, was used. This task specifically tested the phonological loop within working memory.

Phonological Loop: Improving Capacity

• The non-word repetition task, focusing on phonological loop, can improve a child's capacity for working memory and helps with processing and storing sounds when reading.
• Practical application: Focus on the initial parts/beginning of words/sentences, rather than trying to learn the entire passage or sentences all at once when reading, so the rest is more easily recalled.

Homework and Revision: Week 1 Learning Outcomes

• Review of Week 1 learning outcomes.

Check Your Learning

• Questions on understanding difficulties in reading skills via sound categorization and working memory.

Further Resources

• Optional reading and viewing materials relating to the study topics.

Articles

• Several research articles are listed about the various studies discussed

Other Readings

• External readings to support the understanding of the topics discussed.