Research on children’s reading has emphasized the importance of
phono-logical processing. This study set out to investigate the contribution
semantic intervention might make to word recognition in an 8-year old child with
language impairment, WS, who exhibited weak phonological skills and relative
strengths in semantic processing.
Words selected for the study were divided into a treatment group and a no treatment
control group. Words in the treatment group were sub-divided into targets, which
received active semantic processing intervention, and foils, which received exposure
only. Following intervention, target words were read significantly better than
controls. This improvement was maintained at follow-up.
The results of this study lend tentative support to the idea that intervention
emphasizing semantic processing may integrate a range of strategies to support
phonological processing.
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