Experimental Evidence for the Effects of Instructional Bias on Word Identification

Abstract

This article addresses the question of whether instructional biases foster the use of limited processing strategies that impair the child's ability to learn to identify printed words. To evaluate this question, poor and normal readers in second and sixth grade were randomly assigned to treatments that simulated three general methods of teaching word identification: (a) the whole-word/meaning-based method, (b) the phonics method and (c) the whole-word/meaning and phonics methods combined. Results indicate that the whole-word/meaning-based method fostered a global processing strategy in “word” identification while the phonics method fostered an analytic strategy. In contrast, the whole-word/phonics method fostered the use of both processing strategies, and subjects who received this treatment generally performed better than did subjects who received only one or the other. It was concluded that the use of only one of these methods of reading instruction to the exclusion of the other may create processing bias that could impair the acquisition of fluency in word identification, while the complementary use of both may facilitate the acquisition of fluency in word identification.

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