The Development Of Literacy: Theories And Intervention
The development of literacy It is one of the processes that, from the point of view of learning and psychology, are most important.
Thanks to literacy we are able to rely on symbols to expand our sources of information and store all types of memories and data of interest between pages. But… what do we know about this development and the ways in which we can intervene in it?
From a historical perspective, research related to the analysis of the reading process argued that the direct conversion or encoding of each of the words, by itself, could provide complete meaning to the message or information received. However, later work has expanded the initial perspectives.
Thus, currently two complementary processes involved during the recognition of the written word can be differentiated.
1. Phonological or indirect route
It is what allows an exact grapheme-phoneme encoding from which the recognition of the word can occur (as was proposed in the initial theories). Through this system the reader is able to identify both a regular or known word and a pseudoword or unknown word.
This first system involves a higher level of cognitive effort for the reader at the level of working memory, therefore its response is slower.
2. Visual or direct route
It becomes a considerably more agile for word recognition, since a complete grapheme-phoneme decoding is not carried out. As in the case of familiar words, the visual stimulus of graphemes is identified automatically and accurately.
Thus, this system is only valid with the most frequently used words, cannot be used for unknown words or pseudowords. Due to the savings in cognitive effort associated with this route, the reader can attend to other types of information other than that offered by graphemes (spelling, syntax, pragmatic aspects, etc.) that facilitate a global understanding of the information received.
Developmental models of reading acquisition
To explain the process of acquiring reading ability, various different theoretical models have been proposed from an evolutionary perspective, among which the following can be highlighted:
Marsh and Friedman model (1981)
It is derived from Piagetian contributions and distinguishes four stages based on the strategies that the reader uses to access the meaning of the written word: linguistic divination (exclusive identification of very familiar words), memorization by discrimination of visual indices (from some clues such as the initial letters the complete word is deduced), sequential decoding (beginning of the decoding process regular grapheme-phoneme) and hierarchical decoding (rapid recognition of complex, irregular or less familiar words by visual deduction).
For its part, it proposes a sequence of three sequential phases, overcoming each of them leads to the immediately following one. At first the incipient reader is based on logographic strategies from associating the specific form of the set of spellings of the word with a specific meaning (familiar words).
Subsequently, using alphabetic strategies, the reader carries out the mechanized conversion between grapheme and phoneme, allowing the identification of all types of words. Finally, spelling strategies facilitate recognition of words without carrying out a complete analysis of each grapheme, thus deducing some part of the word through the partial application of phonological recoding.
The contributions of Vigosky (1931-1995) and Bruner (1994)
These two researchers focus their interest on the social environment (and historical in the case of Lev Vygotsky) as a determining aspect in language acquisition. Thus, the function and purpose of the most relevant language is to promote interaction between the individuals that make up the social system.
Vygotsky emphasizes more the concept of constructivism, that is, the active role that the individual represents in the acquisition of certain knowledge. from the establishment of Zones of Proximal Development which are combined with the guide or scaffolding provided by the figure of expert, facilitating the apprentice’s passage through said process.
Jerome Bruner, however, puts more emphasis on cognitive processes as the elements from which language is developed, although it also gives significant importance to the social context where it takes place.
Processes in the ability to read and write
Reading comprehension is defined as the set of processes that allow global meaning to be extracted of the information contained in a given text. An adaptive level of reading comprehension requires that the reader have a minimum level of prior knowledge about some of the topics that appear in the text, as well as a sufficient attentional and perceptual level to guarantee correct assimilation of the data read.
On the other hand, cognitive and metacognitive aspects also play a relevant role, as well as the type of words in terms of specificity or technicality, length or familiarity with respect to the reader.
Finally, the order and structure of the text They are also determining aspects since they will facilitate the reader’s understanding of the sequentiality or development of the information referred to in the text.
Processes related to understanding what is read
Among the processes involved in reading comprehension, syntactic processing and semantic processing are distinguished:
Syntactic processing
The first, most basic level of analysis occurs, which allows the reader to get closer to the meaning that corresponds to specific information.
This first level takes place from the implementation of the following strategies:
Observe the order of the words in order to differentiate between the subject and the object of each sentence.
Detect key elements such as determiners, prepositions, adverbs, etc. that helps to delimit the functions of the words to be identified.
Differentiate the different elements of a sentence in terms of subject, verb, complements, subordinate clauses, etc.
Integrate the meaning of individual words to arrive at an overall understanding of the sentence.
Pay attention to the punctuation marks that delimit the sentences and establish the relationships between them with respect to their predecessors and consequences.
After the period of grammatical understanding of the phrase, we proceed to define an interpretation of its global meaning. Thus, a representation is obtained, usually in the form of an image, that synthesizes the content of the sentence completely. To do this, it is known that it is necessary to combine the information of the read sentence with the reader’s set of prior knowledge and cognitive schemes.
Schemas are organizations of interrelated knowledge among themselves that intervene in: the interpretation of the perceived data, the recovery of the information contained in the subject’s memory, the structuring of the information received, the establishment of general and specific objectives and the location of the resources necessary to respond to such information. incorporated. Its main function is the achievement of inferences, for which it must focus and direct the attentional process to focus on the elements that allow it to extract the general meaning of the information read.
Difficulties in handwriting recognition
Regarding word recognition difficulties related to visual perception Among other aspects, it must be taken into account: the capacity for differentiation in the spatial arrangement of mirror letters such as “d”, “p”, “b”, “q”; the ability to discriminate between the consonants “m” and “n”; the possibility of determining the graphic aspects of each letter regardless of the type of writing presented or the implementation of the memory capacity assigned to each letter.
These problems, common in dyslexia must be analyzed carefully since they serve to detect difficulties in visual perceptual integration as this does not occur almost immediately as usually happens in non-dyslexic subjects.
Other types of questions are addressed by problems in the functioning of access routes to the lexicon, both phonologically and visually. Because both have complementary functions, an alteration in one of them inevitably causes an incomplete sintering of the written content to which the subject is exposed. A peculiarity that can occur in the use of the visual route when faced with unknown words or pseudowords is the phenomenon of lexicalization.
The reader confuses a familiar word with another that has certain coincidences in the phonemes it contains and may end up exchanging them if the phonological pathway is not activated or it suffers some type of alteration, such as in cases of phonological dyslexia (from from which the identification of those unknown words is carried out).
At the other extreme, surface dyslexia occurs in cases where regular words are read correctly, but irregular words are not, since the subject is based on an exact grapheme-phoneme decoding. This type of reader has difficulty discriminating between homophonous words such as “bello-vello” or “honda-onda”.
Finally, If the problem lies in syntactic processing the reader may encounter difficulty integrating the meaning of the sentence when:
The structure is more complex or contains several subordinate phrases in the same unit,
You cannot access prior knowledge on the topic addressed by the text or
When the performance of your working memory is lower than expected to work on different aspects of the information to be processed simultaneously.
Intervention
There are various contributions made by the authors who have investigated the type of most effective actions that can be applied for those students with difficulties in reading ability.
For their part, Huertas and Matamala advocate early and individualized intervention, an adoption of positive expectations regarding the student’s performance and tolerance towards one’s own rate of improvement, not being excessively critical of errors made. In addition, they emphasize the type and way of giving the instructions to follow, with brief, precise and clear instructions being more effective. Finally, the idea of linking the effort invested in the improvements achieved must be conveyed to the student in order to increase their motivational level.
At the level of prevention in the appearance of reading difficulties, Clemente and Domínguez are committed to an interactive, playful and dynamic program focused on enhancing phoneme and syllable identification skills.
When the central element revolves around difficulties in recognizing the word, Thomson prioritizes the following actions: emphasize the work on promoting the integration of grapheme-phoneme conversion norms from a multisensory and individualized approach, rely on overlearning processes to more successfully establish the acquired knowledge and combine with actions to promote positive self-esteem and self-concept by counting with the collaboration of the family as the main party involved.
To compensate for difficulties in implementing the visual word processing pathway, it can be practiced with exercises in which a word is associated with its pronunciation and meaning repetitively.
When the problem lies in the phonological route, word construction activities can be carried out from individual phonemes by applying additions, substitutions or omissions of graphemes-phonemes in a different order.
Finally, to work on syntactic understanding you can prescribe tasks of association of syntactic functions to colors from which the reader can more competently discern the meaning of each of the parts of the sentence. To improve the discrimination and proper use of punctuation marks, you can work with texts in which said sign is linked with a small tap with the palms of the hands or on a table) that helps to accentuate the comma pause. or the point of each sentence.
