The Role of Prosodic Sensitivity in Children's Reading Development

While the critical importance of phonological awareness (segmental phonology) to reading ability is well established, the potential role of prosody (suprasegmental phonology) in reading development has only recently been explored. This study examined the relationship between children’s prosodic skills and reading ability. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses examined the unique contribution of word-level and phrase-level prosodic skills to the prediction of three concurrent measures of reading ability in 81 fourth-grade children (mean age 9;3 years). After controlling for phonological awareness and general rhythmic sensitivity, children’s prosodic skills predicted unique variation in word-reading accuracy and in reading comprehension. Phrase-level prosodic skills, assessed by means of an reiterative speech task, predicted unique variance in reading comprehension, after controlling for word reading accuracy, phonological awareness, and general rhythmic sensitivity. These results add to the growing body of evidence of the importance of prosodic skills in reading development

Comparison of two sympatric Pasteuria populations isolated from a tropical vertisol soil

An isolate of Pasteuria (designated PPMJ) recovered from the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne javanica, was characterized using host preference, spore morphometrics, and serology, and compared with another sympatric Pasteuria isolate (designated PPHC) collected from the cyst nematode, Heterodera cajani. PPMJ spores were larger (X 1.5) than the PPHC spores and had a mean diameter of 3.4 mu m after fixation for electron microscopy. The central body of PPMJ spores was about twice as big as the central body of PPHC spores. The host preference tests, based on spore attachment to the nematode cuticle, revealed that Meloidogyne incognita, M. javanica, M. hapla, Pratylenchus coffeae, and Pratylenchus sp. were hosts of PPMJ but not of PPHC. It was found that males of Radopholus similis were hosts of PPHC. Western blot analysis of spore extracts probed with a polyclonal antiserum raised against PPHC spores showed an antigenic ladder which had similarities to lipopolysaccharide; another antiserum revealed differences in the molecular weight of antigens of the different spore isolates. Population diversity can therefore be vastly altered by the maintenance and culture of the bacterium on a particular host. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to the use of Pasteuria as a biological control agent.Peer reviewe

Word association patterns: unpacking the assumptions'

L2 word association research is driven by the belief that association behaviour can reveal information about the development and organisation of the mental lexicon. However, studies have failed to produce consistent findings. This article explores a potentially problematic assumption underlying previous studies: that native-speaker responses are relatively homogeneous and predictable. A group of L1 English speakers completed two word association tasks. Associations were allocated to response-type categories, creating a response profile for each completed task. Considerable variation was found in the response preferences, implying that subjects are not homogeneous in their response behaviour. However, individual response behaviour is consistent; individuals responded to word association tasks in a predictable way. These findings have implications for the way we use word association tasks in future research