Cognitive processes in early reading development: Accommodating individual differences into a model of acquisition

In this target article, we present a model of early reading acquisition that represents an explicit attempt to account for data on individual differences as well as developmental patterns. We survey the literature on individual differences in reading acquisition with a view to evaluating some of the loci of individual differences that have been the focus of the most intense investigation. We then present the self-teaching hypothesis in which it is proposed that phonological
recoding functions as a self-teaching mechanism enabling the learner to independently acquire an autonomous orthographic lexicon. We address the issue of whether the model can account for the extent data on the cognitive correlates of individual differences in reading acquisition. Finally, we address the instructional implications of the literature that we have surveyed.