The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an intervention that focuses on phonics, decoding, reading speed and phonological awareness for 8-9 year old children in reading difficulties. Participants were selected on the basis of screening test results in grade one (decoding and reading comprehension). The participants were divided into two groups, an intervention group (A1, n=10 children) and a control group (A2, n=10). A1 received 30 minutes of intense reading instruction every day for six weeks from special educational needs teachers on top of their usual classroom based reading instruction. The control group received only their usual classroom-based reading instruction.

The simple view of reading is a theory in which reading is divided into decoding and linguistic comprehension. The theory has been used to explain and to subgroup reading disabilities. Research has also investigated if additional factors are of relevance to reading. In the present study, decoding was divided into the factors orthographic decoding and Phonological decoding, while comprehension was divided into word comprehension and grammatical comprehension. The purpose was to analyze these factors and their contribution to reading ability in children in fourth grade: one group with reading difficulties (n=36) and one group with typical reading ability (n=36).

The aim of this study was to examine language abilities and their correlation to reading comprehension in 12 year old children with mild tomoderate sensorineural hearing impairment. Eight children with mild to moderate hearing impairment were tested in listening comprehension, grammatical comprehension, receptive vocabulary, phonological short termmemory, word finding, semantic relations, reading comprehension, comprehension of written words and decoding of words and non-words. The results were compared to results from a comparison group. The children with hearing impairment had significantly lower results in phonological short term memory and decoding. No significant difference was found between groups in reading comprehension.

In a phonological assessment, the aim is to obtain systematic and reliable data of a child's speech output, which can then serve as a basis for a decision on an appropriate intervention (Wolk & Meisler, 1998). Whether phonological assessment should be derived from an analysis of picture-naming or a conversation with the child, and whether the two methods for elicitation generate equivalent results, has been debated among clinicians and researchers for an extended time (Masterson, Bernhardt & Hofheintz, 2005).The aim of the present study was to compare two methods of speech elicitation for phonological assessment: spontaneous conversation and picture-naming, respectively. In the study, the procedures have been used when assessing children with phonological disorders as well as children with typical language development. The results are presented using two levels of phonological analysis; degree of phonological impairment, in terms of percentage of phonemes correct (PPC), and type of phonological impairment, in terms of phonological simplification processes. Eighteen (18) children participated in the study, nine (9) with phonological impairment (age 3;10 ? 5;11), and nine with typical phonologic development (age 3;2 ? 4;6).

International studies show that literacy skills have deteriorated among Swedish students. Empirical evidence states that before being able to learn to read it is important to have phonological awareness. From this perspective, an intervention study was launched to examine whether pupils´ phonological awareness could be enhanced through the work of a special model during a limited time. The aim of the study is to investigate whether six pupils in preschool develop phonological awareness based on Bornholmsmodellen during a limited period of time. The control group was made up of the remaining pupils in the preschool class.

The aim of the study was to examine the reading ability of adultswith intellectual and/or communicative disabilities. The group adults withintellectual and/or communicative disabilities consisted of 66 individuals.One control group consisting of 36 children aged 7 to 12 years and onereference group consisting of 14 adults were used. Participants were given anumber of language and reading related tests. Adults with intellectual and/orcommunicative disabilities had significantly lower results than the adultreference group regarding all tests and significantly lower results than thechild control group regarding phonological processing. There was nodifference between adults with intellectual and/or communicative disabilitiesand the child comparison group regarding word decoding and readingcomprehension.

Sammanfattning Syfte: Att undersöka två läsmetoders effekter på tolv elever från skolår 2, 3 och 4 avseende fonologisk och ortografisk läsförmåga, läsflyt, läsförståelse och RAN (Rapid Automatic Naming) samt jämföra resultaten med en grupp elever som fått traditionell specialundervisning under samma tid. Metod: 52 elever genomförde en screening med avseende att mäta läsflyt och läsförståelse. Av dessa valdes 12 elever ut som hade svårigheter i läsflyt och korrekt läsning, fyra elever från varje skolår, 5 pojkar och 7 flickor. Eleverna delades i två lika stora grupper som tränade ordavkodning med två olika metoder i en-en-undervisning, 20 minuter tre gånger per vecka i sex veckor. De 18 eleverna fick utföra ytterligare fem läs- och skrivtest före och efter interventionen. Resultat: De båda interventionsgrupperna förbättrade sina resultat på flera test mer än gruppen som fick traditionell specialundervisning. Elever som tränat Rydaholmsmetoden fick bättre resultat i alla högläsningstest utom ett.

The main purpose of this study was to collect norm data for thegrammatical receptive language test Test for Reception of Grammar - Version 2(TROG-2), from 144 Swedish children, aged 8:0-9:11 years. Another aim was toinvestigate whether a change in the order of the blocks was needed in the Swedishversion of TROG-2 to keep an increasing level of difficulty. Other aims included toinvestigate the relationship between receptive grammar and word decoding, andbetween parents ratings of their children?s language comprehension and readingabilities and the children?s results on the TROG-2 and a word decoding test. Theresults showed that the order of the blocks needs to be changed and that there wasno significant relationship between language comprehension and word decoding.Parents were better at rating their children?s reading than language comprehension..

AbstractThe overall aim of this study is to show how phonological awareness develops during the first school year and how this can be affected by different teaching materials and working methods. Two classes are compared in the study. One of the classes has digital teaching material and the other class has traditional teaching material. The study seeks to show to what extent there are differences between the groups? phonological awareness.

The present project is a first step towards a new Swedish assessment tool to examine phonological ability in preschool-aged children. The work consisted of developing a word list with words that was considered to reveal a child?s phonological ability and to try out the word list on pre-school children. The reason was to make sure that the words existed in the vocabulary of the children in the chosen ages. A word list consisting of 109 words, which convey relevant phonological information, was created.

It is not uncommon for math difficulties and reading difficulties to occur simultaneously. Despite this, math and reading difficulties are thought to have different cognitive profiles where math difficulties are linked to number sense; an innate ability to understand, approximate and manipulate both quantities and numerical information, whereas reading difficulties are linked to phonological ability; an innate ability to understand, create representations of and manipulate phonological information. A possible link between the difficulties is that phonological abilities also could affect mathematical ability. Support for this comes from studies where comorbid math and reading difficulties are associated with more severe difficulties in arithmetic ability compared to those with isolated math difficulties. The purpose of this study is to examine whether isolated math difficulties, isolated reading difficulties and comorbid math and reading difficulties can be linked to deficits in number sense, phonological ability or both of these, and whether comorbid math and reading difficulties differ in performance in mathematical tasks compared to isolated math difficulties for children in second grade.

It is not uncommon for math difficulties and reading difficulties to occur simultaneously. Despite this, math and reading difficulties are thought to have different cognitive profiles where math difficulties are linked to number sense; an innate ability to understand, approximate and manipulate both quantities and numerical information, whereas reading difficulties are linked to phonological ability; an innate ability to understand, create representations of and manipulate phonological information. A possible link between the difficulties is that phonological abilities also could affect mathematical ability. Support for this comes from studies where comorbid math and reading difficulties are associated with more severe difficulties in arithmetic ability compared to those with isolated math difficulties. The purpose of this study is to examine whether isolated math difficulties, isolated reading difficulties and comorbid math and reading difficulties can be linked to deficits in number sense, phonological ability or both of these, and whether comorbid math and reading difficulties differ in performance in mathematical tasks compared to isolated math difficulties for children in second grade.

Cochleaimplantat (CI) är ett tekniskt hörselhjälpmedel som används av personer med grav hörselnedsättning eller dövhet. Ett CI ger barn med medfödd dövhet möjlighet att höra och utveckla talad kommunikation. CI ersätter inte normal hörsel och det finns stora individuella variationer i språk och talfärdighet hos personer med CI. Syftet med föreliggande studie var att studera kognitiva och språkliga förmågor hos barn med CI med fokus på läsförmåga. I studien deltog 57 barn i åldrarna 7;3-10;4 år.

While reading in deaf children has been the object of a number of studies, the reading abilitiesof children with mild and moderate hearing impairment and their relation to cognitiveprocessing have not received very much attention. Predictive factors of reading ability inhearing children are well known, with phonological and working memory abilities beingnecessary prerequisites for reading development. Existing studies suggest, however, thatcertain hearing-impaired children achieve a reading level comparable to that of hearingchildren in spite of impaired phonological abilities. In the present study, reading abilities anda range of cognitive processing abilities were measured in a group of hearing-impairedchildren and compared with hearing controls in equivalent school grades. Comparisons weremade at group and school-grade level, and the cognitive profile of hearing-impaired childrenat level with controls (those being within one standard deviation) was discussed.

This study investigated relationships between high level language functions and phonological working memory in adults by correlating results oftests in a test battery used for investigating subtle language disorders and digit span task results. Results of two digit span tasks were analyzed in relation to demographic factors. 103 subjects without neurological disease, 20 ? 79 years old, participated. Significant correlations were found between the digit span tasks and most of the tests.