H860 Reading Difficulties Week 5 Fluency Difficulties

Today’s session 1.Memo 2 debrief 2.Fluency presentation 3.Understanding fluency 4.Break 5.Mind mapping

Last week…

We still know that a phonological deficit is the core basis for dyslexia We know that there must be a biological reason for this We know that researchers have not found a convincing causal pathway yet so… If someone tries to convince us otherwise, we need to be wary

Last week… Biology DOES have the potential to: - help with individualizing interventions - help understand the developmental picture

This week: Fluency Word Recognition Comprehension An initial analogy…

Intervention Presentation

Fluency? Wolf & Katzir-Cohen a)What do we mean by fluency? b)What is the development of its component structure? c)How does it relate to reading difficulty subtypes? d)What does it mean for intervention?

What do we mean by fluency? It has been more elusive to define than phonological processing

What is fluency? Bursuck & Damer, Chp. 5., “Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression.”

What is fluency? Bursuck & Damer, Chp. 5., “Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression.”

What is fluency? Bursuck & Damer, Chp. 5., “Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression.”

Quickly… Berninger, Abbott, Billingsley & Nagy Fluency is: a) characteristics of stimulus input e.g. (rate and persistence of visual/auditory signal) b) efficiency and automaticity of internal processes (phonological, orthographic and morphological systems) c) coordination of responses by executive function systems

Quickly… Practice, practice and more practice…

What is fluency? Bursuck & Damer, Chp. 5., “Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with expression.”

Fluency? Wolf & Katzir-Cohen a)What do we mean by fluency? b)What is the development of its component structure? c)How does it relate to reading difficulty subtypes? d)What does it mean for intervention?

Development of Fluency Fluency depends on development of phonological, orthographic, semantic and morphological systems AND LINKAGES BETWEEN THESE

Fluency? Wolf & Katzir-Cohen a)What do we mean by fluency? b)What is the development of its component structure? c)How does it relate to reading difficulty subtypes? d)What does it mean for intervention?

Subtypes? The Double Deficit Hypothesis Basic premise – for some children with early Identifiable, specific, reading difficulties, phonology is not the problem Seen through RAN

RAN Wolf, Bowers and Biddle (2000), “ Naming speed is conceptualized as a complex ensemble of attentional, perceptual, conceptual, memory, phonological, semantic and motoric subprocesses that places heavy emphasis on precise timing requirements within each component and across all components” (p.395) RAN does predict early reading progress, alongside phonological awareness Assumption is that these individuals will also struggle later with fluency

RAN Wolf, Bowers and Biddle (2000), “ Naming speed is conceptualized as a complex ensemble of attentional, perceptual, conceptual, memory, phonological, semantic and motoric subprocesses that places heavy emphasis on precise timing requirements within each component and across all components” (p.395) RAN does predict early reading progress, alongside phonological awareness Assumption is that these individuals will also struggle later with fluency

Vukovic and Siegel, 2006 The Double Deficit Hypothesis: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Evidence Unclear who the children with just slow naming speed are. Need for more intervention studies: e.g. 2 groups matched in phonemic awareness skills but differing in RAN – does poor RAN affect responsiveness to intervention? (Vukovic & Siegel, 2006) Does early RAN difficulty definitely mean later fluency difficulties? JOURNAL OF LEARNING DISABILITIES, 39, 2006, PAGES 25–47

Fluency? Wolf & Katzir-Cohen a)What do we mean by fluency? b)What is the development of its component structure? c)How does it relate to reading difficulty subtypes? d)What does it mean for intervention?

Break

Takeaway More developmental conceptualization of fluency is good e.g. RAVE-O There is a lot that still requires research evidence

Fluency: parting thoughts Word Recognition Comprehension