Generalized recombinative oral reading of a pseudo-alphabet

The oral reading of new words can occur through the recombination of syllables or letters from known words (recombinative reading), with an impact on teaching economy. The work systematically replicated a previous study (Hanna et al., 2011) that involved six planned cycles for teaching and assessing cvcv disyllabic words invented from a pseudo-alphabet with 4 consonants and 4 vowels. The teaching of two new words by pairing a dictated word with a written word, followed by the reading assessment of these and two other recombined new words, progressed in each cycle, without accumulation, until 12 words were directly taught and 12 recombined words were assessed. Two other recombined spoken words were related to figures during teaching, which allowed for the measurement of oral reading of recombined words. Also, multiple probes at cycle onsets measured generalization of oral reading. 34 university students participated individually in person. We documented recombinative oral reading with generalization (N = 28), without generalization (N = 4), and absence of recombinative reading/generalization (N = 2). We documented evidence of restricted control (for example, by first/last letters) in the performance of participants without evidence of generalization or recombination. The results contribute to discuss how to promote control by minimal textual units so that both lower chances of restricted control and higher chances of generalization occurs in a balanced way.