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Reading and Writing

, Volume 31, Issue 3, pp 649–677 | Cite as

Completely illiterate adults can learn to decode in 3 months

  • Régine Kolinsky
  • Isabel Leite
  • Cristina Carvalho
  • Ana Franco
  • José Morais
Article
First Online:

Abstract

The purpose of this case series was to explore whether adults who did not have the opportunity to acquire reading skills during childhood are able to do so rapidly if trained with an adequate literacy program. After 14 weeks of training with a new, optimized, literacy course based on cognitive research, six out of eight participants became able to read words they had never encountered, hence demonstrating that they were definitely engaged in decoding processes that allow autonomous reading. Moreover, they showed enhanced phonemic sensitivity and phonological memory. The latter finding implies that functional changes can take place rapidly outside the reading domain even when reading is acquired in adulthood. Thus, there is no major plasticity impediment preventing rapid eradication of illiteracy in adults.

Keywords

Adult illiteracy Adult literacy Decoding Reading instruction Phonics 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

Régine Kolinsky is Research Director of the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FRS)–FNRS, Belgium. This work was supported by the FRS-FNRS under grant FRFC 2.4515.12 and by an Interuniversity Attraction Poles (IAP) Grant 7/33, Belspo. We warmly thank the non-governmental community center that lent its facilities for the literacy course and testing, and are very grateful to the participants for agreeing to be enrolled in the course. We also sincerely thank the Editor and the two anonymous Reviewers for their very constructive comments and suggestions, which we believe have led to a significant improvement of the original manuscript.

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© Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRSBrusselsBelgium
  2. 2.Unité de Recherche en Neurosciences Cognitives (UNESCOG), Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences (CRCN)Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)BrusselsBelgium
  3. 3.Department of PsychologyUniversity of ÉvoraÉvoraPortugal
  4. 4.LisbonPortugal
  5. 5.CRCN, ULBBrusselsBelgium
  6. 6.UNESCOG, CRCN, ULBBrusselsBelgium

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