literacy & dyslexia

Reading Development

The UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning looks at reading development from infancy through young adulthood. Our research seeks to:

• Identify as early as possible those children who may struggle to read
• Determine the effectiveness of interventions that support struggling readers

Birth to 5 Years: Precursors

Some of the most important contributions to reading development take place from birth to 5 years. During this critical period, children develop language, cognition, and social-emotional skills.

The Collaborative places heavy emphasis on the role that parents, pediatricians, and early childhood educators play in the development of the reading brain. For example, research shows that simply reading to children every night enhances their language development.

The cumulative research on early reading development indicates the importance of foundational skills like:

• Phoneme awareness
• Alphabet knowledge
• Letter-sound correspondence rules
• Basic decoding skills
• Fluency

However, recent research indicates the need to:

• Expand these foundational skills to include connections with vocabulary, grammar, morphology, and other oral language processes
• Connect the components of language development with the deep reading processes (e.g., background knowledge and critical analysis) underlying comprehension

Teaching an expanded view of foundational skills and the explicit connections between them and early comprehension skills is essential for early reading. (See “Elbow Room” brief.)

Adolescent Learners

Adolescent learners who are struggling to read cannot meet the academic demands of their classes. With a long history of reading and spelling difficulties, their decoding skills are often painfully slow and effortful. The less fluent their decoding skills, the fewer number of unknown words they are exposed to. Consequently, their background knowledge, vocabulary, grammar and comprehension skills all suffer. Compounding these challenges are motivational and other social-emotional issues that contribute to an avoidable cycle of learning loss.

Our work addresses these difficulties in various ways:

• In secondary schools we support a comprehensive, multi-component approach that actively engages students in the reading of grade-level texts. https://www.lainterventionproject.com/
• Rather than focusing on phonics patterns at the student’s reading level, we teach decoding strategies using technology and age-appropriate words. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordbuilder-intervention/id1484290594
• At the text level, instruction consists of comprehension strategies and the application of those strategies through student-led discussion. When combined with vocabulary instruction, adolescents are able to acquire the strategies and confidence needed to understand grade-level materials.

Research and Resources

Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9:2, 167-188, DOI: 10.1207/s1532799xssr0902_4

Ehri, L. C. (2005). Development of sight word reading: Phases and findings. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The Science of Reading: A Handbook (pp. 135–154). Blackwell Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470757642.ch8

Gotlieb, R. J., Immordino-Yang, M. H., Gonzalez, E., Rhinehart, L., Mahjouri, S., Pueschel, E., & Nadaya, G. (2022). Becoming literate: Educational implications of coordinated neuropsychological development of reading and social-emotional functioning among diverse youth. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 71(1), 80-132.

Hutton, J. S., Dudley, J., Horowitz-Kraus, T., DeWitt, T., & Holland, S. K. (2020). Associations between screen-based media use and brain white matter integrity in preschool-aged children. JAMA Pediatrics, 174(1), e193869-e193869.

Iyer, S. N., Dawson, M. Z., Sawyer, M. I., Abdullah, N., Saju, L., & Needlman, R. D. (2017). Added value of early literacy screening in preschool children. Clinical Pediatrics, 56(10), 959-963.

Iyer, S. N., Sawyer, M. I., Germany, M., Super, D. M., & Needlman, R. D. (2014). Development of a 5-item parent questionnaire to screen preschool children for reading problems. Clinical Pediatrics, 53(6), 571-578.

Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. New York: HarperCollins. See Chapters 4 and 5.

Wolf, M. (2023). “Elbow Room”: A Developmental, Dynamic Sequence for Teaching Foundational Skills and Comprehension Processes. White paper available through the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice.