Forty students from regular, grade five classes were
divided into two groups of twenty, a good reader group
and a' poor reader group, on the basis. of their reading
scores on Canadian Achievement Tests. .The subjects took.
part in four experimental conditions iM which they .learned
lists of pronounceable and unprono~nceable pseudowords,
some with semantic referents, and responded to questions
designed tci test visual perceptu~l learning and lexical
·and semantic association learning. It' was hypothesized
"that the good reade~ group would be able to make use of
graphemic and phonemic redundancy patterns in order to
improv~·visuSl perceptual learning and lexical and semantic
association lea~ningto a greater extent. than would .the poor
reader gr6up. The data supported this hypothesis, and also
indicated that, although the poor readers were less adept
at using familiar sound and letter patterns, they were more
dependent on· such pa~terns as an aid to visual recognition
memory and semantic recall than were the good readers.
It wa.s postulated that poor readers are in a double- ~ .
bind situatio~ of having to choose between using weak
graphemic-semantic associations or gr~pheme-phoneme associations
which are also weak and which have hindered
them in developing automaticity in. reading