Maryanne Wolf

• Ed.D
• Professor at University of California, Los Angeles

Proficient reading requires critical phonological processing skill that interacts with both genetic and environmental factors. However, the precise nature of the relationships between phonological processing and genetic and environmental factors are poorly understood. We analyzed data from the Genes, Reading and Dyslexia (GRaD) Study on 1419 childr...

Many children and adolescents with reading comprehension difficulties demonstrate impairment in lexical and sublexical foundational skills, and require intervention for multiple levels of the reading system. This paper provides a merged analysis of results from four controlled intervention studies conducted by our research group: Children and adole...

Early identification is important for improving reading outcomes for children at risk for reading difficulties, but current methods tend to perform sub-optimally in identifying true risk. One possible reason is that whereas most prediction models assume linear relationships among risk and reading outcome measures, qualitatively different patterns o...

This chapter examines the formation of a reading brain circuit and how it represents the gradual, ever-more-elaborated connections among visual and auditory perception, multiple language and cognitive functions, and affective processes. Based on this multi-component view of reading, we then approach why this circuit can be quite different in variou...

Background Rapid automatised naming (RAN) and rapid alternating stimulus (RAS) are reliable predictors of reading disability. The underlying biology of reading disability is poorly understood. However, the high correlation among RAN, RAS and reading could be attributable to shared genetic factors that contribute to common biological mechanisms. Ob...

The causes that individuals attribute to reading outcomes shape future behaviors, including engagement or persistence with learning tasks. Although previous reading motivation research has examined differences between typical and struggling readers, there may be unique dynamics related to varying levels of reading and attention skills. Using latent...

Reading is a learned skill crucial for educational attainment. Children from families of lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to have poorer reading performance and this gap widens across years of schooling. Reading relies on the orchestration of multiple neural systems integrated via specific white‐matter pathways, but there is limited understand...

Reading is a learned skill crucial for educational attainment. Children from families of lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to have poorer reading outcomes and this gap widens across years of schooling. Reading relies on the orchestration of multiple neural systems integrated via specific white-matter pathways, but there is limited understanding...

The causal attributions that children make for success and failure have been associated with later reading motivation and ability perceptions, which have the potential to impact future task engagement. Few studies have investigated whether such attributions are domain specific, that is linked with the specific skill in question, or a general motiva...

A growing number of studies report links between nonlinguistic rhythmic abilities and certain linguistic abilities, particularly phonological skills. The current study investigated the relationship between nonlinguistic rhythmic processing, phonological abilities, and early literacy abilities in kindergarteners. A distinctive aspect of the current...

In this chapter we describe the theoretical and technological principles that underlie an innovative application of cross-disciplinary work in cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, child development, education, and technology: The global literacy initiative, Curious Learning. We will delineate the basic principles about the reading brain from cognit...

Close to one billion people in the world do not have basic literacy skills. A key challenge is reaching children in the midst of circumstances that make a traditional school-based approach impractical. This chapter will describe a cross-disciplinary, mobile technology approach to literacy education. The Curious Learning approach distributes researc...

Reading disability is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by difficulties in reading despite educational opportunity and normal intelligence. Performance on rapid automatized naming (RAN) and rapid alternating stimulus (RAS) tests gives a reliable predictor of reading outcome. These tasks involve the integration of different...

This essay is about the improbable emergence of written language six millennia ago that gave rise to the even more improbable, highly sophisticated reading brain of the twenty-first century. How it emerged and what it comprises – both in its most basic iteration in the very young reader and in its most elaborated iteration in the expert reader – is...

This research investigated the influence of parental practices on helpless behaviors of struggling readers during homework tasks. Parents (N = 36) of elementary students reported on their children's helpless behaviors, such as task avoidance and negative affect, during homework assignments, and on the nature and frequency of their support. Distinct...

Across multiple schools in three sites, the impact of grade-at-intervention was evaluated for children at risk or meeting criteria for reading disabilities. A multiple-component reading intervention with demonstrated efficacy was offered to small groups of children in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade. In a quasi-experimental design, 172 children received the...

The present study investigated the relationship between reading skills and attributions, naming speed, and phonological awareness, across a wide range reading skill. Participants were 1105 school-aged children and youth from two understudied populations: African-American and Hispanic-American. Individual assessments of children ranging from 8 to 15...

Research suggests that early identification of developmental dyslexia is important for mitigating the negative effects of dyslexia, including reduced educational attainment and increased socioemotional difficulties. The strongest pre-literacy predictors of dyslexia are rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge, a...

Research suggests that early identification of developmental dyslexia is important for mitigating the negative effects of dyslexia, including reduced educational attainment and increased socio-emotional difficulties. The strongest pre-literacy predictors of dyslexia are rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge,...

Extensive work focuses on the uses of technology at scale for post-literate populations (e.g., MOOC, Learning Games, LMS’s). Little attention is afforded to non-literate populations, particularly in the developing world. This paper presents an approach using mobile devices with the ultimate goal to reach 770 million people. We developed a novel pla...

Competent reading requires various skills beyond those for basic word reading (i.e., core language skills, rapid naming, phonological processing). Contributing "higher-level" or domain-general processes include information processing speed and executive functions (working memory, strategic problem solving, attentional switching). Research in this a...

Reading represents one of the most powerful, cultural inventions that hu-mans have ever created. The importance of this achievement for the advance-ment of our global society cannot be exaggerated. The acquisition of reading changes the brain, propels the individual reader's intelligence, and advances the species' collective intelligence (Wolf, 200...

A small number of studies show that music training is associated with improvements in reading or in its component skills. A central question underlying this present research is whether musical activity can enhance the acquisition of reading skill, potentially before formal reading instruction begins. We explored two dimensions of this question: an...

Two versions of RAVE-O, a fluency-based reading intervention were examined over a 2-intervention period: a 9-month, 44-hour afterschool intervention program, and a month long, 44-hour summer intervention program. 80 children in grades 1-3 were tested on the two subtests of the Test of Word-Reading Efficiency and were assigned to one of 6 groups com...

This study examined the potentially compounding effect of language minority (LM) status on problem behaviors among urban second and third grade-level poor readers. Univariate analyses showed that a disproportionate percentage of both LM and English monolingual (L1) poor readers already displayed clinically significant levels of anxiety, social prob...

From ongoing research about early brain development, cognition, and education, we know that the acquisition of reading changes the brain; in the process, it transforms how the child thinks, and it propels the personal, social-emotional, and economic trajectory of that individual over time (Wolf, 2007). When a child acquires literacy, both the life...

This chapter begins with a brief review of some better-known aspects of Carol Chomsky's scholarly work. It then turns to a recent and less-known outgrowth of her legacy - a view of reading in which comprehensive linguistic knowledge is shown to be critical for both the diagnosis and intervention of reading disabilities. It describes a theoretical o...

The recent rise of electronic media, and the move away from traditional reading and reading, are leading to a fundamental shift in the way in which the human brain processes information. This shift in patterns of human cognition has separate impli-cations for new readers, individuals with reading disabilities, and children without ac-cess to school...

Long‐standing issues with the conceptualization, identification and subtyping of developmental dyslexia persist. This study takes an alternative approach to examine the heterogeneity of developmental dyslexia using taxometric classification techniques. These methods were used with a large sample of 671 children ages 6–8 who were diagnosed with seve...

Phonological awareness, knowledge that speech is composed of syllables and phonemes, is critical for learning to read. Phonological awareness precedes and predicts successful transition from language to literacy, and weakness in phonological awareness is a leading cause of dyslexia, but the brain basis of phonological awareness for spoken language...

Reading fluency beyond decoding is a limitation to many children with developmental reading disorders. In the interest of remediating dysfluency, contributing factors need to be explored and understood in a developmental framework. The focus of this study is orthographic processing in developmental dyslexia, and how it may contribute to reading flu...

This study reports on several specific neurocognitive process predictors of reading outcomes for a sample of 278 children with reading disabilities. Three categories of response (i.e., poor, average, and good) were formed via growth curve models of six reading outcomes. Two nested discriminant function analyses were conducted to evaluate the predic...

Fluent reading depends on a complex set of cognitive processes that must work together in perfect concert. Rapid automatized naming (RAN) tasks provide insight into this system, acting as a microcosm of the processes involved in reading. In this review, we examine both RAN and reading fluency and how each has shaped our understanding of reading dis...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine whether different measures of oral reading fluency relate differentially to reading comprehension performance in two samples of second-grade students: (a) students who evidenced difficulties with nonsense-word oral reading fluency, real-word oral reading fluency, and oral reading fluency of connected...

Results from a controlled evaluation of remedial reading interventions are reported: 279 young disabled readers were randomly assigned to a program according to a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design (IQ, socioeconomic status [SES], and race). The effectiveness of two multiple-component intervention programs for children with reading disabilities (PHAB + RAV...

This study reports on an examination of the factor structure underlying reading performance in a sample of urban, dysfluent children. Participants were 140 second and third graders identified as exhibiting reading difficulties stemming from inefficient word and/or nonword reading. Consistent with a more complex view of reading, the results of struc...

F or many elementary-school children the achievement of reading with fluent comprehension—that is, the ability to read quickly and accurately enough to understand and think about text—remains an essential, but elusive goal. The most used intervention for these children involves "repeated read-ing" methods, where children read the same text several...

ABSTRACTABSTRACT—This article explores the ways in which knowledge from the cognitive neurosciences, linguistics, and education interact to deepen our understanding of reading's complexity and to inform reading intervention. We first describe how research on brain abnormalities and naming speed processes has shaped both our conceptualization of rea...

Limited research has examined the skills of children with a reading disability (RD) and children with RD and a mathematics disability (MD). Even less research has examined the phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in these two groups of children and how these skills relate to reading and math achievement. Additionall...

The majority of work on the double-deficit hypothesis (DDH) of dyslexia has been done at the letter and word levels of reading. Key research questions addressed in this study are (a) do readers with different subtypes of dyslexia display differences in fluency at particular reading levels (e.g., letter, word, and connected text)? and (b) do childre...

This study examined the heterogeneity within a sample of 140 urban second and third graders identified as at-risk for reading failure due to inefficient word and/or nonword reading. Cluster analyses were conducted using standardized factor scores from a four-factor structural equation model characterizing reading performance in this sample. These s...

Purpose Some researchers (F. R. Vellutino, F. M. Scanlon, & M. S. Tanzman, 1994) have argued that the different domains comprising language (e.g., phonology, semantics, and grammar) may influence reading development in a differential manner and at different developmental periods. The purpose of this study was to examine proposed causal relationship...

According to the Lexical Restructuring Model (Metsala & Walley, 199818. Metsala , J. L. and Walley , A. C. 1998. “Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representation: Precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability”. In Word recognition in beginning literacy, Edited by: Metsala , J. L. and Ehri , L. C....

The role of spelling recognition was examined in word reading skills and reading comprehension for dyslexic and nondyslexic children. Dyslexic and nondyslexic children were matched on their raw word reading proficiency. Relationships between spelling recognition and the following were examined for both groups of children: verbal ability, working me...

This study examined the relative contributions of phonological awareness, orthographic pattern recognition, and rapid letter naming to fluent word and connected-text reading within a dyslexic sample of 123 children in second and third grades. Participants were assessed on a variety of fluency measures and reading subskills. Correlations and hierarc...

This study examined the magnitude of differences in standard scores, convergent validity, and concurrent validity when an individual’s performance was gauged using the revised and the normative update (Woodcock, 1998) editions of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test in which the actual test items remained identical but norms have been updated. From th...

Cross-linguistic studies provide a unique tool for the identification of universal processes in oral and written language, both in development and in breakdown (Annual Review of psychology, 52, 369–396). Examining the differential strengths and weaknesses of children with dyslexia in contrasting orthographies can help illumine both the more univers...

The majority of children and adults with reading disabilities exhibit pronounced difficulties on naming-speed measures such as tests of rapid automatized naming (RAN). RAN tasks require speeded naming of serially presented stimuli and share key characteristics with reading, but different versions of the RAN task vary in their sensitivity: The RAN l...

The majority of children and adults with reading disabilities exhibit pronounced dif-ficulties on naming-speed measures such as tests of rapid automatized naming (RAN). RAN tasks require speeded naming of serially presented stimuli and share key characteristics with reading, but different versions of the RAN task vary in their sensitivity: The RAN...

search directions that require all our best efforts in the field of reading. Following Strauss, we first look to the origins of writ- ten language for ancient insights into the teaching of reading. We then connect these insights to current linguistic theory and to our areas of agreement. In the process, there are conceptual surprises, we believe, f...

Achievement and cognitive tests are used extensively in the diagnosis and educational placement of children with reading disabilities (RD). Moreover, research on scholastic interventions often requires repeat testing and information on practice effects. Little is known, however, about the test-retest and other psychometric properties of many common...

This study investigated issues related to commonly used socioeconomic status (SES) measures in 140 participants from three cities (Atlanta, Boston, and Toronto) in two countries (United States and Canada). Measures of SES were two from the United States (four-factor Hollingshead scale, Nakao and Treas scale) and one from Canada (Blishen, Carroll, a...

In an investigation of the N400 component, event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by 4 types of word stimuli (real words, pseudowords, random letter strings, and false fonts) and 3 types of picture stimuli (real pictures, pseudopictures, and picture parts) presented in separate lists were recorded from 10- and 11-year-old children. All types of w...

An increasing body of dyslexia researchdemonstrates, in addition to phonologicaldeficits, a second core deficit in theprocesses underlying naming speed. Thehypothesized independence of phonologicalawareness and naming-speed variables inpredicting variance in three aspects of readingperformance was studied in a group of 144severely-impaired readers...

Three types of dyslexic readers exist, according to the Double-Deficit Hypothesis: those with (a) a single phonological deficit, (b) a single naming-speed deficit, or (c) a combination of deficits. Although there is considerable information about phonologically based reading disabilities, there is insufficient information about poor readers who hav...

This 3-part article represents an effort to confront 3 large lacunae in the research on reading fluency: definition, component structure, and theory-based intervention. The 1st section describes several historical approaches to fluency and the components of fluent reading that are implicit in these approaches. We then present our own developmental-...

The most important implication of the double-deficit hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers, in this issue) concerns a new emphasis on fluency and automaticity in intervention for children with developmental reading disabilities. The RAVE-O (Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary Elaboration, Orthography) program is an experimental, fluency-based approach to readi...

This article integrates the findings in the special issue with a comprehensive review of the evidence for seven central questions about the role of naming-speed deficits in developmental reading disabilities. Cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-linguistic research on naming-speed processes, timing processes, and reading is presented. An evolvi...

This paper is a written version of the Norman Geschwind Lecture delivered to the International Dyslexia Association on November 13, 1998. The first purpose is a theoretical one: to describe a new conceptualization of reading disabilities, the double-deficit hypothesis, that depicts and integrates work on two core deficits in the phonological system...

The authors propose an alternative conceptualization of the developmental dyslexias, the double-deficit hypothesis (i.e., phonological deficits and processes underlying naming-speed deficits represent 2 separable sources of reading dysfunction). Data from cross-sectional, longitudinal, and cross-linguistic studies are reviewed supporting the prese...

Although most severely reading-impaired children are characterized by two core deficits in phonological and naming speed processes, most current interventions emphasize only phonological skills. The present study assessed the efficacy of an eight-week pilot intervention programme designed to increase the speed and accuracy of naming or lexical retr...

discuss a group of studies about reading disabilities in children whose 1st language possesses a more regular orthography than English / describe [the authors'] own recently completed study of reading acquisition and breakdown in [84 2nd and 4th graders with vs without varying degrees of reading disability] in Berlin, Germany, and several provocati...

Goethe wrote that only in the process of learning another language can we begin to understand our own (1810). We suggest in the present chapter that Goethe’s insight is as applicable to our understanding of written language, as oral language. There exists an “implicit universalist claim” among many American researchers that their view of the readin...

In this paper, we review several lines of convergent research to discuss the relationship between developmental dyslexia and slow symbol naming speed. We describe the interactive development of orthographic and phonological codes, and we discuss the methodological problems that may have led to underestimating the importance of individual difference...

Two longitudinal studies examined a "double deficit" hypothesis of reading disorders that contends that along with a core phonological deficit, slow speed of lexical access disrupts the efficient formation of orthographic representations and their quick retrieval. In the first study, 38 children from 6 classrooms in a predominantly white, middle cl...

The present research represents the final 2 years of a 5-year longitudinal investigation of (a) confrontation-based, word-retrieval deficits in dyslexic children; (b) the role of vocabulary development in these deficits; (c) the relationship between confrontation naming performance and three carefully defined aspects of reading performance in the g...

An overview of a systematic research program on the relationship between subprocesses of naming and reading development is provided. In Phase 1 a battery of naming and reading tasks was selected based on a theoretical model drawn from the cognitive, psycholinguistic, and neuropsychological research traditions. In Phase 2 the battery was cross-valid...

This two-part essay discusses how research in the developmental cognitive neurosciences can contribute to an understanding of the complex relations between various aspects of naming and reading processes. The first section reviews findings from both neuropsychological and reading research on letter-naming and general naming speed, and analyzes the...

The creation of words through the novel combination of English morphemes (e.g., "map ball" to refer to a globe) was studied in 40 preschool children, 40 grade school children, and 40 adults. These lexical innovations were collected while subjects named pictured objects, and were evaluated in terms of incidence, communicative effectiveness, novelty,...

In this longitudinal investigation, the development of word-retrieval speed and its relationship to reading was studied in 72 average and 11 severely impaired readers in the kindergarten to grade 2 period (5-8 years). Subjects received a battery of 3 reading measures and 4 continuous naming tests with varied stimulus requirements. Results indicated...

Results from a 3-year longitudinal investigation of confrontation naming in 98 children (75 average readers, 14 severely impaired readers, 9 bilingual readers) indicate: kindergarten performance on confrontation naming predicts Grade 2 reading performance, particularly reading comprehension; confrontation naming differentiates average from severely...

A four-year longitudinal investigation of gender differences in highly specified linguistic and reading operations in 87 children was con ducted in the period before, during, and after reading acquisition. A central focus is the development of automatization within these operations. Results indicate a clear distinction between a sustained male adva...

A rapid, alternating stimulus (RAS) naming measure was designed to study the developing ability in dyslexic readers to direct attention to contextual patterns while performing a rapid serial naming task. The results from a 3-year longitudinal investigation of 98 children indicate three trends. RAS performances differentiate both average from impair...

The well-constructed study by Seidenberg, Bruck, Fornarolo, and Backman ( Applied Psycholinguistics , 6(2)) is an example of the difficulties that occur when good hypotheses and elegant designs are at variance with the realities of developmental reading disorders. My goal in this essay is to use the Seidenberg et al. study as a kind of informal ass...

In research in the cognitive and neurosciences, a co-occurrence between naming and reading disorders has been found in children and aphasic adults. Evidence from a completed cross-sectional study will be briefly summarized and an ongoing longitudinal study will be presented to suggest that factors disrupting specific stages of the naming process ca...

Lexical innovation--the creation of a word by combining existing morphemes in a novel way (e.g. "map ball" for "globe")--was evaluated as a method for circumventing word-finding difficulty in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. Aphasic groups were matched for naming performance and compared to a control group of normal adults matched for age and educat...

The purpose of this book is to bring together essays--first published in the "Harvard Educational Review"--that identify and explicate critical issues and positions on language and reading, examine many educational and political problems arising from these issues, and illuminate the historical and philosophical developments that have made literacy...

This special issue focuses on the nature of the reading process, the nature of language, and the nature of the relationships between them. Specific topics discussed include the bias of language in speech and writing, the functions of language, trends in second-language-acquisition research, learning about psycholinguistic processes by analyzing ora...