Sylvia Defior

• Doctor of Psychology
• Professor at University of Granada

This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the effectiveness of Spanish reading programs in grades K–6. The research designs included were experimental and quasi-experimental. Effect sizes were analyzed using a multivariate meta-regression model with robust variance estimation. To assess the degree of heterogeneity in the effect sizes, a 95%...

The term evidence-based intervention has been increasingly used in educational research. Calls for the use of intervention programs based on supportive empirical evidence rely in the recognition that the likelihood of achieving positive results when implementing such programs increases. Nevertheless, the gap between research and practice remains al...

Many explanations accounting for rapid automatized naming's (RAN) relationship with reading have been proposed. One of the most debated perspectives argues that RAN measures orthographic processing, defined as the ability to process groups of letters or entire words as single units. Given that reading familiar spelling patterns will rely on orthogr...

Background: The deficit on segmental phonology in developmental dyslexia is well established and according to recent studies this deficit extends to suprasegmental phonology or prosody. However, these studies have focused on word-level prosody. Further research is needed concerning prosodic deficit in dyslexia, especially with a Spanish-speaking p...

The present study investigated the moderating role of orthographic consistency on the development of reading comprehension in four language groups (English, n = 179; Spanish, n = 188; Czech, n = 135; Slovak, n = 194) from kindergarten to Grade 2. In all languages, early variations in phoneme awareness/letter knowledge, rapid automatised naming, and...

This longitudinal study investigates the importance of two methods for the success of the learning of reading and spelling and for the development of the phonemic awareness (PA) ability. It also verifies the contribution of PA and its predictive capacity for literacy learning in Brazilian Portuguese (PB). Two groups of children who started the firs...

Although the importance of vocabulary training in English speaking countries is well recognized and has been extensively studied, the same is not true for Spanish–few evidence based vocabulary studies for Spanish-speaking children have been reported. Here, two rich oral vocabulary training programs (definition and context), based on literature abou...

List of control words in alphabetical order. Note. Gram. Class = grammatical class (A = adjective, N = noun, V = verb); Freq/million = frequency of appearance per million words in written material (Martínez-Martín & García, 2004); Richness = number of different meanings; Productivity = number of derivatives. (DOCX)

Resumen en español (short summary in Spanish). Note. Referencia para el texto completo en inglés: Gomes-Koban, Simpson, Valle, & Defior. Oral vocabulary training program for Spanish third-graders with low socio-economic status: A randomized controlled trial. (DOCX)

List of intervention words in the order they were taught. Note. Gram. Class = grammatical class (A = adjective, N = noun, V = verb); Freq/million = frequency of appearance per million words in written material (Martínez-Martín & García, 2004); Richness = number of different meanings; Productivity = number of derivatives. (DOCX)

Around the world, children embark on learning to read in their home language or writing system. But does their specific language, and how it is written, make a difference to how they learn? How is learning to read English similar to or different from learning in other languages? Is reading alphabetic writing a different challenge from reading sylla...

A lack of longitudinal studies impedes the understanding of whether visual processing skills significantly influence reading performance. The present study assessed if multi-element processing (MEP), a visual processing task comprising only non-verbal stimuli, was predominantly related with decoding or sight-word reading. One hundred Spanish pre-re...

Reading fluency defined as speed, accuracy, and prosody, is a critical component of reading development. The purpose of this research was to compare the efficacy of automaticity versus prosody programmes on reading comprehension. The study included 122 Spanish primary-school children (74 second and 48 fourth graders), randomly assigned to one of th...

The intersection of sound processing, speech production, and literacy is a promising and growing area of study. This volume showcases recent empirical research exploring the association between linguistic rhythm and reading. Linguistic rhythm does not easily assume a single definition, which is part of the motivation for this volume, and subsumes c...

Recent literature research has shown the influence of suprasegmental phonology (the awareness of prosodic features such as stress, timing, and intonation) on literacy acquisition. However, the majority of these studies have been carried out in English. Moreover, the lexical level has been the most explored component. The current study analyzes the...

One of the hallmarks of dyslexia is the failure to automatise written patterns despite repeated exposure to print. Although many explanations have been proposed to explain this problem, researchers have recently begun to explore the possibility that an underlying implicit learning deficit may play a role in dyslexia. This hypothesis has been invest...

Some research on literacy acquisition suggests that implicit learning processes may be related to reading and writing proficiency in English, which is a deep orthography. However, little research has been done to determine if the same is true in shallow orthographies. Here, we investigated whether the implicit learning ability of third grade Spanis...

This study reviews some of the most relevant cognitive skills related to literacy acquisition in Spanish. Beyond the well-known influence of phonological segmental skills, it highlights the growing importance of other cognitive skills needed for acquisition, whether explicit or implicit in nature, to which too little attention has been devoted, inc...

Previous studies implicate suprasegmental phonology in reading acquisition. However, little is known about how suprasegmental sensitivity develops or how it contributes to reading. Here, 130 Spanish primary-school children participated in this 2-year longitudinal study. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity and metrical-stress sensitivit...

Supplementary materials (appendices) for Calet, Gutiérrez-Palma, Simpson, González-Trujillo, & Sylvia Defior (2015)

Abstract Written word recognition is a sine qua non of reading. The acquisition and development of word recognition requires the synergistic working of multiple factors and processes. In this study, developmental and expert models of reading that explain the mechanisms underlying the acquisition and expert performance on this important skill are e...

The role of segmental phonology in developmental dyslexia (DD) is well established (e.g., deficit in phonological awareness), but the role of suprasegmental phonology (prosody) has been less widely investigated. Stress is one of the main prosodic features and refers to the relative prominence of syllables (strong/weak) within a word. The aim of the...

In this article we intend to describe the evolution of the Spanish linguistic system (spoken and written) from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, as well as to describe its current form; the main aim is to show how current Spanish language characteristics influence and explain, in part, the existing data about literacy acquisition in Span...

This paper investigates Spanish dyslexic spelling abilities: specifically, the influence of syllabic linguistic structure (simple vs consonant cluster) on children's spelling performance. Consonant clusters are phonologically complex structures, so it was anticipated that there would be lower spelling performance for these syllabic structures than...

Recent literacy research shows an increasing interest in the influence of prosody on literacy acquisition. The current study examines the relationship of nonspeech rhythmic skills to children's reading acquisition, and their possible relation to stress assignment in Spanish, a syllable-timed language. Sixty-six third graders with no reading difficu...

The main purpose of this study was to design and validate a rating scale to measure reading fluency. As well as speed and accuracy, different dimensions of prosody were taken into account (volume, intonation, pauses and phrasing), aspects hardly considered in reading assessment. In addition, a measure of reading quality was included. 122 Spanish pr...

Este artículo intenta presentar las concepciones existentes sobre el origen de las dificultades lectoras. Se revisan las primeras explicaciones, que se centraban principalmente en los aspectos neuro-perceptivo-motores. A continuación se presentan los enfoques actuales, que las asocian fundamentalmente con problemas de naturaleza lingüística. En est...

Este artículo tiene como objetivo proporcionar un marco de referencia para logopedas sobre la intervención psicoeducativa de la dislexia evolutiva. En primer lugar, se recogen los principales aspectos que debe incluir la intervención individual realizada por el logopeda, como son la mejora de la fluidez lectora, de las habilidades fonológicas y, en...

The importance of prosodic elements is recognised in most definitions of fluency. Although speed and accuracy have been typically considered the constituents of reading fluency, prosody is emerging as an additional component. The relevance of prosody in comprehension is increasingly recognised in the latest studies. The purpose of this research is...

All alphabetic orthographies use letters in printed words to represent the phonemes in spoken words, but they differ in the consistency of the relationship between letters and phonemes. English appears to be the least consistent alphabetic orthography phonologically, and, consequently, children learn to read more slowly in English than in languages...

The data matrices for Simpson, Mousikou, Montoya & Defior (2013)

Previous studies have shown that phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and verbal memory span are reliable correlates of learning to read in English. However, the extent to which these different predictors have the same relative importance in different languages remains uncertain. In this article, we present the...

Indicators of letter visual similarity have been used for controlling the design of empirical and neuropsychological studies and for rigorously determining the factors that underlie reading ability and literacy acquisition. Additionally, these letter similarity/confusability matrices have been useful for studies examining more general aspects of hu...

El presente informe, surgido del mandato del Senado, constituye la primera publicación producto del trabajo de la Red Eurydice España-REDIE y recoge el diseño, el marco teórico y los resultados del estudio sobre el alumnado con dislexia en el contexto de las necesidades específicas de apoyo educativo. Con el objetivo general de realizar un diagnóst...

There has been very little research in Spanish on the potential role of prosodic skills in reading and spelling acquisition, which is the subject of the present study. A total of 85 children in 5th year of Primary Education (mean age 10 years and 9 months) performed tests assessing memory, stress awareness, phonological awareness, reading and spell...

En este artículo se presenta el desarrollo un programa de intervención para mejorar la fluidez lectora, especialmente en niños con dislexia. La fluidez lectora es considerada un componente fundamental en el aprendizaje del lenguaje escrito, especialmente por su papel facilitador de la comprensión lectora. Su mejora es particularmente importante en...

This article describes the process of planning an intervention program aimed at improving reading fluency in children with developmental dyslexia. Reading fluency is considered a crucial component in achieving literacy, especially regarding its role in facilitating reading comprehension. Improving reading fluency is particularly important for child...

This article describes the process of planning an intervention program aimed at improving reading fluency in children with developmental dyslexia. Reading fluency is considered a crucial component in achieving literacy, especially regarding its role in facilitating reading comprehension. Improving reading fluency is particularly important for child...

This study undertakes a cross-linguistic comparison of reading and spelling acquisition in French, Portuguese and Spanish languages. It aims to examine several explanatory factors for the well-documented effect of language on the speed of reading and spelling development: differences in orthographic depth and complexity of syllabic structures. A lo...

This review focuses on phonological awareness (PA) skills and their key role both in literacy acquisition and development and in explaining reading and writing difficulties; in particular, we focus on phonemic awareness, which implies awareness of the smallest speech units. Several questions about PA are addressed; we discuss major research finding...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a music training program on children's phonological awareness and naming speed in Spanish. Participants were preschool children whose first language was either Spanish (n = 45) or Tamazight ( n = 52), a Berber dialect spoken in Morocco's Rif area. The two-year pretest/posttest study sho...

El reconocimiento de las palabras escritas de forma fluida se considera la piedra angular de la lectura y requisito sine qua non que posibilita la comprensión lectora. Existe un amplio consenso en la comunidad científica sobre la estrecha relación entre los procesos fonológicos (conciencia fonológica, memoria a corto plazo verbal y memoria operativ...

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling abilities. The absence of other high level cognitive deficits in the dyslexic population has led some authors to propose that non-strategical processes like implicit learning could be impaired in this population...

This paper investigates Spanish dyslexic spelling abilities: specifically, the influence of syllabic linguistic structure (simple vs consonant cluster) on children's spelling performance. Consonant clusters are phonologically complex structures, so it was anticipated that there would be lower spelling performance for these syllabic structures than...

This study investigated how Spanish orthographic code complexities influence learning to spell. Word and pseudoword dictation tests were carried out by 208 first- to fourth-grade students. Items included the following orthographic code complexities: digraph, contextual effect, position effect, letter H, inconsistency, and stress mark. The results r...

El principal objetivo de este trabajo es determinar el efecto del entrenamiento de las habilidades fonológicas en la adquisición de la lectoescritura y verificar si es un efecto duradero. Se utilizó un diseño experimental con cinco grupos (N=12 por grupo), incluido el control, que recibieron distintos tipos de entrenamiento, al comienzo del primer...

This study was intended to help clarify the nature of dyslexia in Spanish. A sample of 30 children, 8 to 16 years old, participated in this study. Dyslexic children were compared to two control groups, a chronological age-matched control group and a reading level-matched control group. Measures included nonword and pseudohomophone reading (phonolog...

Deep orthographies usually represent morphology and phonology simultaneously; both resources are necessary for spelling. In shallow orthographies, such as Spanish, phonology would be enough to spell most words. However, morphological knowledge may also take part in spelling. This study examined how Spanish children in 1st (N = 148), 2nd (N = 155) a...

Resumen El objetivo principal del estudio es analizar la evolución de las habilidades de conciencia fonológica (CF) antes y durante el aprendizaje del sistema ortográfico. Igualmente, conocer su poder predictivo respecto a la adquisición y desarrollo de la lectoescritura en castellano, además de su importancia relativa. Se utilizó un diseño longitu...

El primer objetivo de nuestro trabajo era comprobar el efecto de un entrenamiento en conciencia fonológica y reglas de correspondencia grafema-fonema en la adquisición de la lectura durante el primer año de instrucción lectora de adultos analfabetos. Un segundo objetivo era estudiar el efecto de la variable categoría léxica y longitud de las palabr...

The aims of this longitudinal study are to investigate the cognitive and verbal development of discordant twins without neurological morbidity. Twenty pairs (40 infants) of discordant twins (discordance range 15–41%) were examined. A follow‐up study was carried out of 11 selected pairs (22 infants), with biological and cognitive measures at birth,...

The effectiveness of two training programmes on phonological awareness related to the child's first language was evaluated. One of the training programmes included musical activities. 97 preschoolers participated in the study, 46.39% children spoke Spanish as their first language, and 53.60% children spoke Tamazight (a Berber dialect that is transm...

RESUMEN El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar el desarrollo de la adquisición del lenguaje escrito teniendo en cuenta las complejidades del código alfabético castellano. Se analizaron las diferencias entre lectura y escritura en los cuatro primeros años de aprendizaje. Se evaluaron niños de primero a cuarto de E.P. en tareas de lectura y escritur...

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo principal el seguimiento de la evolución del conocimiento fonológico y su relación con el inicio de la adquisición del lenguaje escrito.

En este trabajo se analiza la posible influencia del conocimiento morfosintactico en la escritura de un sistema ortografico transparente como es el castellano. Se utiliza una clasificacion que considera tres situaciones en las que el conocimiento gramatical puede influir en la escritura en sistemas opacos: o) decidir, utilizando la morfologia, entr...

The main goal of the present work is the understanding of the memory and phonological awareness skills of prereading children to determine the early factors that relate to reading acquisition. Another goal is to analyze whether phonological awareness skills, syllabic segmentation in particular, are affected by the specific characteristics of the Sp...

This study analyses the possible influence of morphosyntactic knowledge on the spelling of a transparent orthographic system such as Spanish. A three situation classification where the grammatical knowledge could influence the spelling of opaque orthographic systems is used: a) deciding between two or more acceptable spelling sequences; b) spelling...

During a school year, samples of words written by three groups of children of successive ages were collected. Two groups of children were in first and second year of Kindergarten (4 and 5 years of age), when alphabetic rules were not taught in a systematic way. The third group was in first year of Primary School (6 years of age), and was being taug...

Dyslexia is a p ersistent problem in written language, consisting of a severe difficulty in word recognition. It is characterized by low reading performance, while other skills are not impaired, being normal or even superior in some cases. This paper reviews different proposals for defining and clarifying c auses of dyslexia. Additionally, we comme...

This research studies the development of both reading and phonological awareness skills in Spanish children learning to read and spell. The main aim was to investigate reading and PA skills development in early stages of reading acquisition, that is, 1st grade of Primary Education. Letter knowledge, word and pseudoword reading and three different P...

This study is a part of a larger crosslinguistic project coordinated by P.H.K. Seymour. The aim of the present paper is to provide a comparative study of the development of cognitive processes involved in reading and spelling acquisition in three Romance languages, namely Spanish, French and Portuguese and to verify the influence of the teaching me...

El propósito de este trabajo es evaluar el desarrollo de las habilidades de conciencia fonémica (Cfo), el nivel más alto de conciencia fonológica (CF), en edades preescolares tempranas. Se evalúa una muestra de niños de preescolar en dos aplicaciones durante el año académico (Noviembre y Abril), con una tarea de Cfo en la que se manipuló la complej...

Resumen La dislexia es un problema persistente en el lenguaje escrito, que consiste en una dificultad grave en el reconocimiento de palabras. Se caracteriza por un rendimiento en lectura bajo, mientras que no hay problemas en el resto de habilidades, que son normales e incluso superiores en algunos casos. Este trabajo revisa diferentes propuestas q...

The notion that the ability to segment speech into its phonological units in an explicit conscious manner, commonly termed phonological awareness, is related with learning to read, is one of the most important contributions to cognitive research on reading of the last three decades. This chapter centers on studies designed to determine whether this...

Résumé Le but principal du present travail est d’étudier les connaissances phonologiques des enfants prélecteurs de quatre ans. Ce travail s’integre dans le cadre d’une étude longitudinale qui a pour finalité la determination des facteurs précoces contribuant à l’apprentissage de la lecture en espagnol. Nous utilisons des tâches différentes dans l...

The main aim of this study was to determine the pattern of errors in Spanish spelling. Specifically, we were interested in discovering if all Spanish words have similar levels of spelling difficulty or whether there are types of words that cause a high percentage of spelling errors. 972 children aged between 8 to 10 years were requested to write a...

Diseño y evaluación del cuestionario de evaluación docente de la Universidad de Granada

El principal objetivo de nuestra estudio era encontrar el efecto de un entrenamiento en conciencia fonológica y lectura durante el primer año de instrucción lectora. Utilizamos un diseño experimental, con tres grupas de adultos analfabetos. Ninguna de ellas había asistida al colegio cuando fueron pequeños. Todos las grupas recibieran veintidós sesi...

La calidad de la docencia universitaria es un deber social de la universidad. En este trabajo, tras reflexionar sobre el significado de la calidad en educación superior y sobre la indivisibilidad del binomio calidad-evaluación, se presenta el plan de calidad de la Universidad de Granada para el cuatrienio 2001-2004. Este plan contiene tres programa...

The objective of this work is to analyze the influence of low birth weight on biological motor, cognitive, and social development of twins with discordant weight by means of a longitudinal study carried out at one year and two years. Eleven pairs of twins were studied with a ≥ 15% discordance in weight at birth. Biological, neurological and psychol...

El presente trabajo estudia la influencia de las características del sistema ortográfico del español en la escritura de palabras. Para ello se utilizó una muestra de 313 niños de 1º a 4º de Primaria. Los niños fueron sometidos a una tarea de dictado en la que se presentaron una serie de palabras que contenían fonemas cuya correspondencia con los gr...

This study was designed to assess the developmental profile of word reading performance in Spanish related to different linguistic variables (word length, lexical frequency, lexical category, and grammatical category). An additional aim of this study was to compare the effect of these variables in normal and poor Spanish readers. One hundred and fo...

The main aim of our study was to find out the effect of several lexical and sublexical variables (lexical category, lexical frequency, syllabic structure, and word length) in the acquisition of reading in a transparent language such as Spanish. The second goal of our study was the comparison of the effect of these variables in normal and poor Spani...

En este trabajo revisamos la metodología de la investigación sobre la consciencia fonológica, desde el punto de vista de las tareas utilizadas, con el fin de realizar una clasificación. Trás una breve introducción al tema, se propone una taxonomía en quince tareas tipo. Esta clasificación incluye la descripción de cada una de ellas y las referencia...

The aim of our study was to determine the effect of training of phonological abilities upon the acquisition of reading and writing during the first year of primary school. An experimental design, with five groups of subjects matched by age, sex, IQ, phonological abilities and reading and writing level was used. Every group received twenty training...

El objetivo de este trabajo es revisar la investigación sobre la consciencia fonologica y establecer su papel en el aprendizaje de la lectura y de la escritura. Comienza con una breve introduccion sobre las caractemticas del lenguaje oral y de su sistema de representacion escrito. En el segundo apartado se detallan algunos trabajos que muestran el...

Resumo Las habilidades psicolingüísticas distinguen a los seres humanos de otros de su misma especie. Además, el desarrollo del lenguaje, en su dimensión oral y escrita, es crucial para el desarrollo humano tanto desde el punto de vista personal como social y académico. Ahora bien, la adquisición del sistema lingüístico implica dominar unas habilid...

Resumen Entre las habilidades metacognitivas se han dedicado un gran esfuerzo investigador a las habilidades metalingüísticas, sobre todo, por su demostrada relación con el aprendizaje de la lectura y de la escritura. El estudio de la consciencia lingüística, término que hace referencia a la habilidad para tratar el lenguaje objetivamente, para re...

Estudio de las dificultades de aprendizaje que se manifiestan en el proceso de adquisición de lo que se denominan habilidades básicas o habilidades instrumentales en el ámbito académico: la lectura, la escritura y las matemáticas elementales. En cada uno de estos tres aprendizajes son abordados aspectos teóricos, de evaluación y de intervención de...