Liang Tianjin Normal University No. 57‐1 Wujiayao Street Hexi District Tianjin 300074 China
Callie W. Little Faculty of Medicine and Health School of Psychology University of New England Elm Avenue Armidale NSW 2351 Australia
Simon P. Liversedge School of Psychology and Computer Science University of Central Lancashire Preston Lancashire PR1 2HE UK
Catherine McBride Department of Psychology The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong China
Monica Melby‐Lervåg Department of Special Needs Education University of Oslo Postboks 1140 Blindern 0318 Oslo Norway
Xiangzhi Meng School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences Peking University Beijing China
Kristina Moll Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy Ludwig‐Maximilians‐University of Munich Nußbaumstraße 5a 80336 Munich Germany
Sonali Nag Department of Education University of Oxford University 15 Norham Gardens Oxford OX2 6PY UK
Kate Nation Department of Experimental Psychology Anna Watts Building Radcliffe Observatory Quarter Oxford OX2 6GG UK
Dora Jue Pan Department of Psychology The Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong China
Silvia Paracchini School of Medicine University of St Andrews North Haugh St Andrews KY16 9TF Scotland
Karalyn Patterson MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit University of Cambridge 15 Chaucer Road Cambridge CB2 7EF UK
Charles Perfetti Learning Research & Development Center University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA
Yaacov Petscher College of Social Work Florida State University 296 Champions Way University Center Building C ‐ Suite 2500 Tallahassee FL 32306‐2570 USA
Kathleen Rastle Department of Psychology Royal Holloway, University of London Egham Hill Egham Surrey TW20 0EX UK
Valeria M. Rigobon Department of Psychology Florida State University 1107 W. Call Street Tallahassee FL 32306‐4301 USA
Robert Savage University College London Institute of Education 25 Woburn Square London W1H 0AA UK
Mark S. Seidenberg University of Wisconsin‐Madison 1202 West Johnson Street Madison WI 53706‐1611 USA
Margaret J. Snowling Department of Experimental Psychology St John’s College Oxford OX1 3JP UK
Laura M. Steacy College of Education & Florida Center for Reading Research Florida State University 1114 W Call Street Tallahassee FL 32306-4450 USA
Rebecca Treiman Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1125 One Brookings Drive St. Louis MO 63130‐4899 USA
Paul van den Broek Education and Child Studies Leiden University Wassenaarseweg 52 2333 AK Leiden The Netherlands
Richard K. Wagner Department of Psychology Florida State University 1107 W.Call Street Tallahassee FL 32306‐4301 USA
Krystal Werfel Center for Childhood Deafness, Language, and Learning Boys Town National Research Hospital 555 N 30th Street Omaha, NE 68131 USA
Sarah G. Wood Department of Psychology Florida State University 1107 W. Call Street Tallahassee FL 32306‐4301 USA
Anna Woollams Division of Neuroscience & Experimental Psychology The University of Manchester Oxford Rd Manchester M13 9PL UK
Jason D. Yeatman Graduate School of Education Stanford University 485 Lasuen Mall Stanford CA 94305‐3096 USA
Chuanli Zang Tianjin Normal University University of Central Lancashire Preston Lancashire PR1 2HE UK
Jason D. Zevin University of Southern California 3551 Trousdale Parkway – ADM 204 Los Angeles CA 90089‐4019 USA
Fotena A. Zirps Department of Psychology Florida State University 1107 W.Call Street Tallahassee FL 32306‐4301 USA
Preface
As the eponymous title The Science of Reading suggested, the aim of the first edition of this handbook was to bring together scientific studies of reading into a state‐of‐the‐art review. The preface of that volume stated “The science of reading is mature and healthy as the contributions to this volume make clear.” Our aim in this second edition remained the same – to bring together scientific studies of reading into an updated overview of the field; as we shall see, old questions have been answered and new questions have arisen as understanding of the complexities of reading has deepened, driven by theoretical insights and methodological advances.
Part 1 deals with word recognition processes in skilled reading. This is a natural starting point: Words are the building blocks of reading and without adequate word identification, reading comprehension is compromised. With a review of the skilled system as a backdrop, Part 2 considers the development of word reading. Although knowledge of word recognition processes and their development was already advanced fifteen years ago, each of the chapters in Parts 1 and 2 highlights new findings and research directions. A number of themes emerge, not least a greater recognition of the need to unite theories about development and learning with theories about skilled processing – after all, reading in proficient adults is the product of many years of reading experience that has optimized the reading system to the task in hand. Another important development has been to better understand how morphological structure is represented in written language, and how this is accessed and used during word recognition. Like the mappings between orthography and phonology, morphological information is systematically represented in orthography in ways that reflect graded regularities. Learning to read efficiently requires children to develop a reading system that adequately embodies the distributional information coded by the writing system. In line with this view, several chapters emphasize statistical learning approaches that view skilled reading as the emergent product of interactions between readers and texts.
Word recognition is the front end of skilled processing and is central to learning to read, but much more is required to allow understanding of the texts we read. Part 3 focuses on the complexities of reading comprehension and its development. Key developments since the first edition include an emphasis on the need for greater integration between different levels of enquiry – word recognition, sentence processing, and discourse processing have tended to be different research streams, each with its own traditions, assumptions, and methodologies. While these different approaches have often been considered as separate, these chapters stress that comprehension is multifactorial – not a single entity so much as a product, constructed by multiple cognitive processes operating over a text, in concert with background knowledge. There are important implications for the classroom, not least the observation that reading comprehension might fail for many different reasons.
Part 4 turns to reading in different languages, a field that has burgeoned in recent years. While the science of reading is still dominated
