Summary
The present experiments address two interrelated problems; the causes of reading retardation and the possible mechanisms underlying multi-sensory teaching procedures, which involve manually tracing around words, and which reputedly help children retarded in reading. Two experiments explored the effects of manual tracing on memory for letters and non-verbal forms in normal and retarded readers. The retarded readers remembered fewer letters and gained selective benefit from tracing them. In the case of non-verbal forms the two groups performed equally and tracing was equally beneficial to memory in both groups. These findings were explained in terms of the retarded readers' limited reliance on a phonological memory code. A further experiment showed that the differential effect of tracing on the retarded readers' memory for letters was not simply a consequence of their limited reading ability. It was concluded that reading retardation is characterised by deficits of verbal, but not of visual, memory. The tracing activity involved in multi-sensory teaching may help retarded readers by providing a mnemonic aid, which compensates for their verbal memory difficulties.
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This research was carried out at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and was supported by the SSRC. I should like to thank Dr. D.E. Broadbent and Professor P.E. Bryant for their help and Dr. L. Bradley for providing information concerning some of the children seen in Experiment 3. A more complete account of these experiments and others relating to them is to be found in Hulme, C. (in press), Reading retardation and multi-sensory teaching: an experimental study. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London
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Hulme, C. The effects of manual tracing on memory in normal and retarded readers: Some implications for multi-sensory teaching. Psychol. Res 43, 179–191 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00309828
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00309828