BY VINCENT MARRELLA
George Marsh is researching cognitive development and acquisition of reading capablities. He began his research studying a kindergarten class divided into two groups. One group was asked to memorize by rote a list of one hundred words the other group was asked to memorize these words using phonetics. It turned out that both groups were able to memorize the list but were not able to read new unfamiliar words presented to them. The hypothesis was that the students learning through phonetics would be able to learn new words by way of blending sounds. This did not happen.
Many new theories have been looked into regarding cognitive processes necessaries for learning how to read. The human information processing model uses the metaphor of computer word recognition and processing but it lacks ecological validity and any conception of developmental stages. The psycholynguistic model assumes that language acquisition is an innate device in the human mind. Piaget assumes that a normal child in a normal environment develops naturally without instruction. He also states that certain levels of logical development must be present for learning to be possible; these occur naturally. As opposed to this, Bruner theorizes that learning is based on socio-cultural interactions. And finally, Case uses a concept known as M space which is the capacity of working memory. As a child grows the M space increases from one unit to seven. Learning and cognitive development result from conflict between learning strategies present with various amounts of M space.
All of these theories proved inadaquate for Marsh and his colleagues. They propose a new theory. This is called the model of reading development. This theory is also concerned with levels of cognitive develpment. This is made up of four stages. In stage one kindergartners try to learn new words when reading. When they encounter a word they do not know they make a guess based solely on previous experience. Pictorial and contextual relevance is important. If a child reads something familiar except one word he will substitute a word which he associates with the other words and if pictures are present the process is easier. This first stage is based on top-down processing. Stage two is called discrimination net guessing which is more accurate than stage one. When an unfamiliar word is present the child looks for shared characterisitcs of that word and one he already knows. This is a compromise between top-down and bottom-up processing models. These guesses are real words and only words already in the child's vocabulary. Stage three is the decoding stage. They substitute words that are not already in their reading vocabulary and some are non-words. At this stage the child acknowledges that all words are readable based on the alphabetic principle (each letter has its own sound). Finally in stage four the left right strategy for reading is abandoned and the whole word is analyzed to read and pronounce it.
As the child grows and develops they progress through these stages of cognitive development. This theory disproves Piaget because he states that the child must be in the concrete operational stage before he can reach stage three of this model. However Marsh found that some children were not in the concrete operational stage when in stage three of the model of reading development. So a general assumption presented by Marsh and some others is that reading ability comes with cognitive development with Case's M space being the most acceptable of the theories presented earlier.
REFERENCE
Marsh, G. (1987). Applying cognitive development to the acquisition of literacy. Applications of Cognitive psychology: Problem solving, education and computing. 59-71.