CONTEXT AVAILABILITY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORD READING SKILL

The influence of word meanings on lexical processing in 2nd-, 3nd-, an d 5th-grade high- and low-skill readers was examined. Two experiments examined the relationship between semantic correlates of word concrete ness (specifically rated imageability and context availability) and le xical processing speed and accuracy. Rated context availability was a significant predictor of lexical decision times and word reading accur acy beyond nonsemantic factors. However context-availability effects w ere larger in young and low-skill readers. Thus, the ability to retrie ve the meanings of low-context-availability words easily is an importa nt component in the development of skilled reading.