Papers by Marcin Szczerbinski
National Research and …, 2007
This report investigates teaching and learning practices applied to reading in the United Kingdom... more This report investigates teaching and learning practices applied to reading in the United Kingdom. The research project began in July 2003 and was completed in March 2006, collating information on 500 learners in each study. Researchers interviewed learners and ...
Irish Educational Studies
The use of individual tutoring as a method of educational instruction has been prevalent for seve... more The use of individual tutoring as a method of educational instruction has been prevalent for several decades. One popular tutoring practice is Paired Reading, a reading support technique specifically designed for non-professionals. The accessible nature of Paired Reading makes it an attractive option for schools who wish to capitalise on support offered by community members. This paper reports a multi-faceted evaluation of a Paired Reading programme with primary school children experiencing reading fluency and comprehension difficulties as tutees and university students as volunteer tutors. Tutees engaged in one-on-one reading support sessions with tutors for either 5 or 8 weeks, with each session including 20 min of reading. Although there was no evidence to suggest that Paired Reading improved tutee's reading performance, feedback from tutees and tutors indicated the programme was an extremely positive experience. School staff also welcomed the subjective benefits of the programme. Parents of Paired Reading tutees reported a range of positive observed changes in the reading behaviours and attitudes of their children. This study builds on and contributes to work in the reading support literature, highlighting Paired Reading as a wide-ranging experience offering both tutees and tutors a variety of benefits spanning academic, social, and leisure domains.
Scientific reports, Jan 11, 2018
The prevalence and long-term consequences of dyslexia make it crucial to look for effective and e... more The prevalence and long-term consequences of dyslexia make it crucial to look for effective and efficient ways of its therapy. Action video games (AVG) were implied as a possible remedy for difficulties in reading in Italian and English-speaking children. However, the studies examining the effectiveness of AVG application in dyslexia suffered from significant methodological weaknesses such as small sample sizes and lack of a control group with no intervention. In our study, we tested how two forms of training: based on AVG and on phonological non-action video games (PNAVG), affect reading in a group of fifty-four Polish children with dyslexia. Both speed and accuracy of reading increased in AVG as much as in PNAVG group. Moreover, both groups improved in phonological awareness, selective attention and rapid naming. Critically, the reading progress in the two groups did not differ from a dyslexic control group which did not participate in any training. Thus, the observed improvement ...
Studia Psychologica
The aim of this work is to evaluate the roles of age and emotional valence in word recognition in... more The aim of this work is to evaluate the roles of age and emotional valence in word recognition in terms of ex-Gaussian distribution components. In order to do that, a word recognition task was carried out with two age groups, in which emotional valence was manipulated. Older participants did not present a clear trend for reaction times. The younger participants showed significant statistical differences in negative words for target and distracting conditions. Addressing the ex-Gaussian Ï„ parameter, often related to attentional demands in the literature, agerelated differences in emotional valence seem not to have an effect for negative words. Focusing on emotional valence for each group, the younger participants only showed an effect on negative distracting words. The older participants showed an effect regarding negative and positive target words, and negative distracting words. This suggests that the attentional demand is higher for emotional words, in particular, for the older participants.
Śledziński, D., Szczerbiński, M. & Piotrowska, J. (2013) Przygotowanie i podział na sylaby ko... more Śledziński, D., Szczerbiński, M. & Piotrowska, J. (2013) Przygotowanie i podział na sylaby korpusu tekstów dla dzieci [A corpus of child’s literature: preparation and syllabification]. In Scripta manent – res novae, (pp. 439-450). Poznań: Wyd. Naukowe UAM.
This report investigates teaching and learning practices applied to reading in the United Kingdom... more This report investigates teaching and learning practices applied to reading in the United Kingdom. The research project began in July 2003 and was completed in March 2006, collating information on 500 learners in each study. Researchers interviewed learners and ...
The aim of this study was to establish cognitive profiles of dyslexic adults on tests developed w... more The aim of this study was to establish cognitive profiles of dyslexic adults on tests developed within the three main theories of developmental dyslexia: phonological, visual magnocellular and cerebellar and to investigate which theory can account for these profiles. The sample consisted of 15 Polish university students or alumni with a formal diagnosis of dyslexia, without ADHD and 15 controls matched on education, age, gender, IQ and handedness. The results revealed a striking heterogeneity of profiles. Nine dyslexics exhibited only a phonological deficit; one a phonological and a visual magnocellular deficit; a further three a phonological and a cerebellar deficit; two either a cerebellar or a visual magnocellular deficit. None of the three main theories of dyslexia can account for all the cases studied here. It is suggested that the best account of these data is in terms of different sub-types of dyslexia with different underlying causes, such as phonological, visual magnocellul...
Kamykowska, J. & Szczerbiński, M. (2014). Komputerowe gry edukacyjne dla dzieci z trudnościam... more Kamykowska, J. & Szczerbiński, M. (2014). Komputerowe gry edukacyjne dla dzieci z trudnościami w czytaniu – doświadczenia polskie i irlandzkie. [Educational computer games for children with reading difficulties: Polish and Irish experience]. In Z problematyki kształcenia językowego, t. V, (pp. 265-290). Białystok: Wyd. Uni. w Białymstoku.
About the project Target group: children who experience persistent difficulties in the acquisiti... more About the project Target group: children who experience persistent difficulties in the acquisition of automatic (fast and effortless) recognition of printed words Aim: to create a remediation method that is attractive to children, requires small input from tutors, and offers ample opportunities for sustained practice Software: this project builds on Graphogame Servicea set of online games helping children overcome difficulties in the initial phases of learning to read, widely used in Finland (www.graphogame.com) Outputs: 1.Graphogame-Fluent: an expanded version of the original Graphogame, containing reading accuracy and speed training activities aimed at older (grade 3-6) readers, available in English and Polish 2.Evidence concerning the effectiveness and practical applicability of the new game collected through experimental studies and surveying the users.
Language Acquisition, 2015
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Memory & Cognition, 2012
We explored the role of phonological representations of number words in exact calculation. The re... more We explored the role of phonological representations of number words in exact calculation. The reaction times and accuracy of responses in multidigit addition problems were compared across three groups of participants (young healthy, older healthy, and 3 patients with severe aphasia) and two types of addition problems: phonologically long in English (containing the bisyllabic number word "seven") and short in English (monosyllabic number words-e.g., "six"). Older healthy participants were significantly faster and more accurate in calculation than younger healthy participants. The older participants showed no evidence of a phonological length effect. However this effect was apparent in the younger adults, with longer reaction times on phonologically long problems. Furthermore, there was an association between the presence of a phonological length effect and the overall speed of response, suggesting that less proficient calculators were more reliant on phonological mediation of performance. The aphasic participants retained the ability to complete multidigit additions and were as accurate as the younger healthy group, although the response times of two of the 3 patients were slow. The aphasic participants varied with regard to the presence of a phonological length effect. Two participants showed no evidence of phonological mediation, while 1 displayed a phonological length effect. The results suggest that language resources are not mandatory for exact addition, although they may be used to scaffold math performance in less competent calculators. Evidence of phonological mediation of performance in aphasic participants may provide insight into the integrity or otherwise of inner speech in severe aphasia.
Journal of Child Language, 2006
57 Polish-speaking children aged from 2;4, to 4;8 and 16 adult controls participated in a nonce-w... more 57 Polish-speaking children aged from 2;4, to 4;8 and 16 adult controls participated in a nonce-word inflection experiment testing their ability to use the genitive, dative and accusative inflections productively. Results show that this ability develops early: the majority of two-year-olds were already productive with all inflections apart from dative neuter; and the overall performance of the four-year-olds was very similar to that of adults. All age groups were more productive with inflections that apply to large and/or phonologically diverse classes, although class size and token frequency appeared to be more important for younger children (two- and three-year-olds) and phonological diversity for older children and adults. Regularity, on the other hand, was a very poor predictor of productivity. The results support usage-based models of language acquisition and are problematic for the dual mechanism model.
Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 2011
The role of language for learning is core across the entire school curriculum. Thus, children wit... more The role of language for learning is core across the entire school curriculum. Thus, children with speech, language and communication needs are at risk of underachieving academically. Research reports and policy drivers advocate the need for a whole school approach (WSA) to enhance children's spoken language and communication skills, yet little is known about what it is like for schools to implement such a programme. Primary Talk is an example of a WSA, developed and piloted by the UK-based charity I CAN. This article presents an evaluation of what it was like for staff to implement a WSA in their schools. Head teachers and WSA coordinators from five schools were interviewed regarding the perceived benefits and challenges of implementing a WSA. Thematic analysis of the interview data indicated that the programme was worthwhile to implement and that it enhanced the use of visual support strategies and adult-child directed speech. The respondents also identified a number of challenges while implementing the programme relating to time constraints and maintaining the WSA as high profile in the context of competing demands in their schools.
Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2009
central coherence, perceptual style, global/local perception, field-independence, closure flexibi... more central coherence, perceptual style, global/local perception, field-independence, closure flexibility, visual perception, factor analysis historically, the concepts of field-independence, closure flexibility, and weak central coherence have been used to denote a locally, rather globally, dominated perceptual style. to date, there has been little attempt to clarify the relationship between these constructs, or to examine the convergent validity of the various tasks purported to measure them. to address this, we administered 14 tasks that have been used to study visual perceptual styles to a group of 90 neuro-typical adults. the data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis. We found evidence for the existence of a narrowly defined weak central coherence (field-independence) factor that received loadings from only a few of the tasks used to operationalise this concept. this factor can most aptly be described as representing the ability to dis-embed a simple stimulus from a more complex array. the results suggest that future studies of perceptual styles should include tasks whose theoretical validity is empirically verified, as such validity cannot be established merely on the basis of a priori task analysis. Moreover, the use of multiple indices is required to capture the latent dimensions of perceptual styles reliably.
Written Language and Literacy, Aug 31, 2008
International research findings have repeatedly confirmed the significance of speech and language... more International research findings have repeatedly confirmed the significance of speech and language processing skills and letter knowledge for successful literacy acquisition. However, the importance of these skills for early literacy success in German speakers remains uncertain. The present longitudinal study aimed to explore this issue. Sixty-nine German-speaking children were assessed in nursery a few months before starting school (mean age 5;11) and in Grade 1 (mean age 6;11) with tests of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, expressive vocabulary, grammar comprehension, letter knowledge, and nonverbal reasoning. Grade 1 assessments also included measures of reading accuracy, speed, comprehension, and spelling. The results confirmed that speech and language processing skills and letter knowledge before and around the time of school enrolment explain individual differences in early literacy development, with letter knowledge and phonological awareness emerging as most important predictors. No variance in literacy performance was uniquely predicted by nonverbal reasoning.
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Papers by Marcin Szczerbinski