How Children Read: Matching by Sight and Sound

Abstract

The Coding Test was given to 80 children from 7 to 12 years old. They were asked to judge whether pairs of pictures, letters or words looked or sounded the same. The test measures three aspects of reading: coding written letters or words into sound, detecting small visual differences, and the speed of processing. In each grade poor readers made more errors than good readers. The ability to detect small differences did not change beyond Grade 3, but the ability to recognize sound-alike words improved throughout grades. There was no relation between reading ability and performance in a non-verbal pictorial task.