Semantic priming effects in normal versus poor readers.

The authors studied sensitivity to semantic priming, as distinct from semantic judgment, in poor readers. Association strength (high vs. low semantic association) was manipulated factorially with semantic association type (categoric vs.

Age-of-acquisition effects in native speakers and second-language learners.

Two lexical decision experiments were conducted to study the locus of age-of-acquisition (AoA) effects in skilled readers with English or Dutch as their first language. AoA effects have generally been explained in terms of phonological processing. In Experiment 1, Dutch elementary school and secondary school students were presented with words factorially manipulated on surface frequency and AoA).

Contrasting effects of age of acquisition in lexical decision and letter detection.

Two experiments studied attention in beginning and skilled readers of Dutch to letter information in function words and content words. Early and late acquired nouns and function words were presented to third-grade students and skilled adolescent readers. Target words were presented in short story contexts, as in the study of Greenberg, Koriat, and Vellutino (1998).