ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a selective overview of recent cognitive research into children’s specific literacy problems. This field of research reflects interests of cognitive psychologists and, consequently, gives particular views about the reading and spelling process. Much emphasis is placed upon areas such as ‘phonological processing’, ‘working memory’ and ‘lexical access’. As outlined by Bertelson, learning to read is regarded as an explicit manipulation of the units that the written symbols stand for: ‘the word is where the action is’ (Bertelson, 1986).