Phonological and orthographic processing in normal reading development

Theories of normal reading development commonly propose that children move through various stages of reading development from using visual cues to developing phonological awareness and learning letter-to-sound correspondences. Current evidence suggests a reciprocal relationship between phonological awareness and reading ability. Dual-route models of word recognition can be interpreted as conceptualising phonological and orthographic decoding as two independent word processing routes. Flexible use of these strategies is considered necessary for successful reading and can be assessed using a phoneme/grapheme deletion task. Several current models assume that working memory plays an important role in reading since poor readers have been found to have poor working memory skills. This may be related to the capacity of working memory which increases during childhood. Studies of reading have often been criticised for studying disrupted forms of reading by using distracter tasks or subjects with neurological damage. To study reading without disruption a correlational approach may be used to identify cognitive processing components closely associated with capacity to read fluently.