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    The development of English and Japanese phonology in a bilingual child aged 1 year 3 months to 1 year 8 months : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Science at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1978) Natusch, Barry Antony
    Language used by a child between the ages of 1;3 and 1;8 was recorded while she was being brought up in a bilingual English-Japanese home environment. The words used by the child were phonologically analysed to determine whether there was any evidence for a structural theory or a frequency theory of phonological development. Evidence was found to support and to contradict each of these types of theory. It was found that either a) the child chose to attempt only words which contained a high proportion of phonemes she knew she could utter or b) the frequency of the parents' phonemes was modified from the frequency of standard adult speech when the parent was talking to the child. Little evidence of phonological interference between the two languages was observed during the course of this study.
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    The effect of otitis media with effusion (OME) on emerging literacy : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education, Massey University
    (Massey University, 1994) Drumm, Diana
    Otitis Media with Effusion (OME), commonly referred to as glue ear, is one of the most common illnesses of early childhood. It is difficult to detect as OME is frequently symptom free and usually clears spontaneously. It can be detected by tympanometry, a simple painless non intrusive test, which can be easily performed by trained operators. In New Zealand all children have this hearing test on school entry. Research has shown links between OME and educational under achievement, possibly due to the intermittent deafness which accompanies this condition. As OME mostly occurs during early childhood, a time when the basis of language is being established, it may cause delays in learning which will not be seen until later in life. This research was designed to examine the possible effect of OME on emerging literacy in 120 children from a large urban area of New Zealand. The aural history of the children was established from a questionnaire and the results of the hearing tests on school entry. Measures of their reading ability were obtained from their scores on the Diagnostic Reading Survey. This survey, usually referred to as the six year old net test, is taken by most children in New Zealand. The childrens' scores on the reading test were examined to see if there was any correlation between these and evidence of OME. Although no conclusive proof was found that children with OME were reading at a lower age than their peers, statistically significant differences were found between the scores of the Dictation section of the test. The Dictation section is designed to measure how well children are distinguishing and recording individual sounds in words. The findings suggest that OME affects auditory discrimination so that incorrect symbols are ascribed to sounds. This effect will hinder a child when learning to read and may cause delays in other aspects of learning. No evidence of increased incidence of OME amongst Maori or Pacific Island students was found, however, the number of these students in the sample was very small. Maori and Pacific Island students however did have significantly lower scores than their peers in all aspects of the reading test.
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    The effects of rime-based orthographic analogy training on the word recognition skills of children with reading disability : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 1998) Greaney, Keith Thomas
    Phonological processing abilities among a group of older disabled readers were investigated in the first of two experimental studies. A second study was undertaken to determine the extent to which a group of disabled older readers could be trained to use rime spelling unit knowledge to make orthographic analogies when decoding unfamiliar words. The purpose of the first study was to assess (using a reading age match design) specific phonological processing abilities among a group of disabled readers. The disabled readers' performances on the tasks were compared to the performances of a group of younger normally developing readers who were reading at the same level as the disabled readers. The rime analogy training study was designed to encourage disabled readers to capitalize on their limited but sufficient phonological knowledge to assist them to make greater use of rime spelling units as a basis for making orthographic analogies when decoding unfamiliar words. In the rime analogy training study 57 disabled readers were assigned to either one of two training groups or to a third standard non-intervention (control) group. All of the disabled readers were enrolled on Resource Teacher of Reading (RTR) programmes. Thirty-six of these RTR children received one of two specifically designed 5-minute decoding interventions on a daily basis for 11 weeks. The remaining 21 disabled readers received only their standard RTR lessons. The Neale Analysis of Reading Ability Accuracy Subtest (1981), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (1981), the Burn Word Test (1981) and five tests of phonological processing ability were administered to all 114 children (i.e., 57 disabled readers and 57 younger normal readers) at the beginning of the reading age match study. The 57 disabled readers were also posttested on all the measures (except the PPVT) at the conclusion of the training study. Follow-up tests one year after the completion of the training study were also administered to 52 of the disabled readers and to a randomly selected group of 20 of the younger normally developing readers. The results from the reading age match study confirmed findings from earlier studies indicating that disabled older readers' poor reading abilities are more likely to be caused by phonological processing deficits rather than by a general developmental delay in their word processing abilities. The results from the rime analogy training study indicated that disabled readers can be trained to focus on specific rime spelling units and to use this knowledge to assist them to decode a large proportion of unfamiliar words encountered during context reading. Results from the one year follow-up study further indicated that the positive gains made during the training intervention study were maintained. The strategies taught in the training programme were also shown to generalize to uninstructed reading materials.