ACQ Vol 11 no 2 2009

57 / 68

ACQ Volume 11, Number 2 2009 119
and other cognitive tests. The tests can be administered
online to one or more children, and the results stored in an
individual and secure test page. Alternatively, hardcopies of
the test materials can be downloaded as pdfs from MOTIf
in order to administer the tests offline. We hope that this
modified test and the new facility for administering it will
assist professionals in assessing key components of word
recognition ability in children.
References
Castles, A., & Coltheart, M. (1993). Varieties of
developmental dyslexia. Cognition, 47, 149–180.
Castles, A., Coltheart, M., Larson, L., Jones, P., Saunders,
S., & McArthur, G. (2009). Assessing the basic components
of reading: A revision of the Castles and Coltheart test with
new norms. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties, 14, 67–88.
Jackson, N.E., & Coltheart, M. (2001). Routes to reading
success and failure. New York: Psychology Press.
Two key processes that children
need to acquire when learning to read
are sounding-out ability and whole word
recognition ability (see e.g., Jackson &
Coltheart, 2001). Sounding-out ability
involves converting printed letters into
their corresponding sounds, and is best
assessed by measuring a child’s accuracy
in reading aloud non-words (nonsense
words), such as gop, since these cannot
be read by any other means. Whole word
recognition ability involves accessing
stored knowledge about familiar written
words and is best assessed by measuring
accuracy in reading aloud irregular words,
such as yacht, since these cannot be read
correctly via sounding-out rules.
Castles and Coltheart (1993) developed
a test designed to directly assess how well
children can use the sounding-out and
the whole word recognition procedures.
The test consisted of 30 irregular words
and 30 non-words for assessing each of
the key reading processes. Thirty regular
words, like cat were also included. These kinds of words
can be read accurately by either sounding-out or whole
word recognition and so provide a measure of the combined
functioning of the two processes.
There were, however, two major limitations of this original
version of the Castles and Coltheart test. First, the test did
not have a stopping rule. As a result, even a child who could
successfully read aloud only a few of the simplest items
on the test had to be presented with all 90 items. This was
both time-consuming for the tester and potentially stressful
for a child who could only read a few items. Second, for the
older age groups, the test was subject to ceiling effects,
particularly for the regular words and the non-words.
We have now developed a modified version of the test
to address these limitations. The new test contains an
expanded set of items, with 40 each of regular words,
irregular words and non-words, rather than the original 30
items of each type. The new items extend the upper end
of the difficulty range of the test, making it less susceptible
to ceiling effects than the original version. The test also
incorporates a stopping-rule, which makes administration
of the test less time-consuming, and removes the stress on
children who can only read a few items. The test has been
normed on over 1000 Australian children. More details about
the development and norming of the test can be found in
Castles et al. (2009).
The test is free of charge and is available to teachers,
professionals and researchers at our new Macquarie Online
Test Interface (MOTIf: ). MOTIf is
an online platform for the administration and scoring of this
New Castles and Coltheart reading
test available online
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science
Anne Castles, Genevieve McArthur and Max Coltheart
Correspondence to:
Professor Anne Castles
Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS)
Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109
phone: 02 9850 4860
fax: 02 9850 6059
email:
web:
htm?memberID=4
Research updates