Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33634711›Full record

ArticlePsychological science2021

The Dramatic Impact of Explicit Instruction on Learning to Read in a New Writing System.

Kathleen Rastle, Clare Lally, Matthew H Davis, J S H Taylor

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Psychological science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
10citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

10 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Statistical learning in spelling and reading.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025
    Review
  3. Cerebello-Cerebral Pathways Contribute to Written Word Production.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Dyslexia, the Amsterdam Way.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024
    Review
  6. Article
  7. Evaluating the impact of short educational videos on the cortical networks for mathematics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Kathleen RastleDepartment of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London.ORCID 0000-0002-3070-7555
Clare LallyDepartment of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London.ORCID 0000-0002-8121-6262
Matthew H DavisMRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge.ORCID 0000-0003-2239-0778
J S H TaylorDivision of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London.ORCID 0000-0002-1109-8539

Funding

Medical Research Council MC_UU_00005/5Medical Research Council SUAG/044 G101400
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

There is profound and long-standing debate over the role of explicit instruction in reading acquisition. In this research, we investigated the impact of teaching regularities in the writing system explicitly rather than relying on learners to discover these regularities through text experience alone. Over 10 days, 48 adults learned to read novel words printed in two artificial writing systems. One group learned spelling-to-sound and spelling-to-meaning regularities solely through experience with the novel words, whereas the other group received a brief session of explicit instruction on these regularities before training commenced. Results showed that virtually all participants who received instruction performed at ceiling on tests that probed generalization of underlying regularities. In contrast, despite up to 18 hr of training on the novel words, less than 25% of discovery learners performed on par with those who received instruction. These findings illustrate the dramatic impact of teaching method on outcomes during reading acquisition.

Indexed as

LearningReadingAdultGeneralization, PsychologicalHumansLanguageWritingartificial languageinstructionlearningopen dataopen materialsphonicsreading

Identifiers

PMID33634711
PMCPMC13021060

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.