Formation of sensorimotor mechanisms in syllable production during the initial stage of reading acquisition

Cognitive mechanisms of reading skills in children are not well understood. With regard to the Russian language this question has not been studied at all. Due to the nature of Russian language a central position in the development of reading skill takes sounds blending into syllable. The paper deals with longitudinal evaluation of phonetic and temporal characteristics of sounds blending into syllable in Russian-speaking 1st grade pupils (7 years old) during the initial stage of reading acquisition (namely, the subjects were not yet able to read whole words). The hypothesis of this study is the assumption of co-existence of a few individual-typological strategies of mastering the reading skills. The experiment involved 40 pupils that have not yet mastered the skill of reading whole words to the beginning of training in first class. The study was conducted individually and consisted of two types of tests: I - reading stimuli (letters, syllables, words, pseudowords) and II - the repetition of similar auditory stimuli. Phonogram was analyzed by the software PRAAT 5.2.16, Gold Wave and original computer program. Timing and phonetic characteristics of reading letters and syllables (CV, VC) were estimated, also simultaneity recognition index of syllable in children was calculated. There were statistically significant differences in the basic phonetic and temporal characteristics between the results at the beginning of 1 grade (E1) and after 3 months (E2). Individual qualitative and quantitative typological peculiarities were shown that during the reading skills development children turn from sequential to parallel mode of graphic syllable processing and synthesis of phonetic syllable. Individual strategies and schemes in reading development among the 1st grade pupils are also discussed in the paper.