Cognitive Foundations of Reading and Its Acquisition

This book serves as a succinct resource on the cognitive requirements of reading. It provides a coherent, overall view of reading and learning to read, and does so in a relatively sparse fashion that supports retention. The initial sections of the book describe the cognitive structure of reading and the cognitive foundation upon which that structure is built. This is followed by discussions of how an understanding of these cognitive requirements can be used in practice with standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, to advance the teaching of reading and the delivery of interventions for students who encounter difficulties along the way. The book focuses on reading in English as its exemplar, but shows how its framework can be adapted to understand the broad cognitive requirements for reading and learning to read in any phonologically-based orthography. It provides a way for reading professionals to think about reading and its development and gives them mechanisms that, coupled with such understanding, will help them link what children must know to become strong readers to what teaching can best provide through the competent use of available tools. In this way, the book will help reading professionals be both efficient and effective in what they provide all their students and be much better equipped to support those students who struggle to learn to read.  

Wesley A. Hoover earned his PhD in Human Experimental Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin with a specialty in psycholinguistics. He worked at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL) for 35 years in the areas of early reading, bilingual reading, language acquisition, and mathematics and science education, leading research, research application, and several large-scale education dissemination and professional development projects. His main research centered on the Simple View of Reading and its cognitive underpinnings and was focused on detailing the specifications and predictions of these conceptual models and testing them in the context of early grade reading. In his last 18 years at SEDL he served as its President and CEO, directing the overall work of some 100 staff supported through competitively won awards; his culminating work at SEDL was leading its 2015 merger with the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Within AIR, he served as Executive Vice President and Senior Advisor, working on merger transition issues and special projects within the field of literacy, before retiring in 2019.William E. Tunmer is Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at the Massey University Institute of Education. He received his PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979, specializing in the areas of theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive development. From 1980 to 1988 he held the positions of Research Fellow, Lecturer, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia. In 1988 he was appointed Professor of Educational Psychology at Massey University, where he served as Head of Department and Dean of the Faculty of Education. Professor Tunmer has published over 150 journal articles, book chapters, and books on early literacy development, literacy learning difficulties, and reading intervention. He has served on the editorial boards of Reading Research Quarterly, Language and Education, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Journal of Learning Disabilities, and in 2012 he completed a 5-year term as Associate Editor of Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. In 1999 Professor Tunmer was co-winner of the International Reading Association’s Dina Feitelson Award for Excellence in Research.