Relationships Among Orthographic Measures and Reading Achievement

As participants in an after school tutoring program, 29 second through fifth graders were administered subtests designed to measure visual processing and memory skills: Orthography, Visual Discrimination, Sound Symbol Learning, Letter Memory: Visual, and Rapid Symbol Naming from the Test of Dyslexia (McCallum & Bell, 2001); and Picture Recognition and Visual-Auditory Learning from the Woodcock-Johnson III-Cognitive Battery (WJIII; Woodcock, McGrew & Mather, 2001). Subtest scores were obtained from administration of achievement measures: Letter-Word Calling, Fluency, Passage Comprehension, and Spelling (Test of Dyslexia); Letter-Word Identification, Reading Fluency, Comprehension, and Spelling (WJIII-Achievement Battery); and the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency (Mather, Hamill, Allen & Roberts, 2004). Zero-order correlational analyses were employed to demonstrate the relationships among the orthographic and achievement variables. Orthography, Letter Memory: Visual, and Rapid Symbol Naming from the Test of Dyslexia had mildly positive correlational relationships with achievement measures. In addition, stepwise multiple regressions were conducted to measure the extent to which the orthographic variables predict criterion achievement variables. TOD Rapid Symbol Naming was found to have predictive capabilities to all four achievement constructs: Sight word identification, fluency, comprehension, and spelling. WJIII Reading Fluency had three predictors: Orthography, Letter Memory: Visual, and Rapid Symbol Naming from the Test of Dyslexia.