Assessment of lexical and nonlexical reading abilities in children: some normative data

Our sample consisted of 420 children who were making normal progress in learning to read (35 girls and 35 boys at each of the ages from 7 to 12 years inclusive, from a variety of schools in Sydney). They were given a set of 30 exception words, 30 nonwords, and 30 regular words to read aloud. As predicted by a dual-route account of learning to read, the correlations between regular word and exception word reading accuracy and between regular word and nonword reading accuracy were higher than the correlation between exception word and nonword reading accuracy; also as predicted by this account, regular word reading accuracy was higher than exception word and nonword reading accuracy. We present our data as age-related norms which can be used in conjunction with our materials to assess how well children in this age range who appear to have reading difficulties are acquiring the lexical and nonlexical reading procedures as they learn to read.