Development of and Relationship Between Phonological and Motivational Processes and Naming Speed in Predicting Word Recognition in Grade 1

In this 2-year longitudinal study the developmental relationships among letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming, and task orientation were examined, and linguistic-motivational pathways of word reading acquisition were traced from kindergarten to Grade 1 by means of structural equation modeling. The participants were 100 Finnish-speaking nonreaders. Results showed that kindergarten (5–6 years) letter knowledge predicted subsequent preschool (6–7 years) phonological awareness and task orientation. RAN was a unique longitudinal and concurrent predictor of word recognition, suggesting that rapid naming provides a reliable prediction of prospective word reading ability at least in a transparent language. Controlling for phonological awareness and rapid naming, task orientation contributed uniquely to the prediction of word reading competence, suggesting that motivational and linguistic factors are both at work as children face the gradually growing demands of learning to read and write in Grade 1.     

Understanding individual differences in word recognition skills of ESL children

This paper focuses on the extent to which the development of ESL (English as a Second Language) word recognition skills mimics similar trajectories in same-aged EL1 (English as a First Language) children, and the extent to which phonological processing skills and rapid naming can be used to predict word recognition performance in ESL children. Two cohorts of Grade 1 ESL and EL1 primary-level children were followed for two consecutive years. Results indicated that vocabulary knowledge, a measure of language proficiency, and nonverbal intelligence were not significant predictors of word recognition in either group. Yet, by considering individual differences in phonological awareness and rapid naming, it was possible to predict substantial amounts of variance on word recognition performance six months and one year later in both language groups. Commonality analyses indicated that phonological awareness and rapid naming contributed unique variance to word recognition performance. Moreover, the profiles of not at-risk children in the EL1 and ESL groups were similar on all but the oral language measure, where EL1 children had the advantage. In addition, EL1 and ESL profiles of children who had word-recognition difficulty were similar, with low performance on rapid naming and phonological awareness. Results indicate that these measures are reliable indicators of potential reading disability among ESL children.     

Examining an Extended Home Literacy Model: The Mediating Roles of Emergent Literacy Skills and Reading Fluency

We examined the developmental relationships between home literacy environment (parent teaching, shared book reading) and emergent literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, rapid naming speed) in kindergarten, reading accuracy and fluency in Grade 1, and reading comprehension in Grades 2 and 3 in a sample of Canadian children learning to read English (N = 214). Results from a latent variable model showed that parent teaching predicted letter knowledge and phonological awareness, and shared book reading predicted vocabulary and rapid naming speed after controlling for family socioeconomic status. Moreover, both parent teaching and shared book reading contributed indirectly to reading accuracy and fluency in Grade 1, which then mediated the effects of home literacy environment on reading comprehension in Grades 2 and 3. The results suggest that the effects of home literacy environment on later reading development are distributed via more pathways than previously thought.     

Accuracy of teacher assessments of second-language students at risk for reading disability

This study examined the accuracy of teacher assessments in screening for reading disabilities among students of English as a second language (ESL) and as a first language (L1). Academic and oral language tests were administered to 369 children (249 ESL, 120 L1) at the beginning of Grade 1 and at the end of Grade 2. Concurrently, 51 teachers nominated children at risk for reading failure and completed rating scales assessing academic and oral language skills. Scholastic records were reviewed for notation of concern or referral. The criterion measure was a standardized reading score based on phonological awareness, rapid naming, and word recognition. Results indicated that teacher rating scales and nominations had low sensitivity in identifying ESL and L1 students at risk for reading disability at the 1-year mark. Relative to other forms of screening, teacher-expressed concern had lower sensitivity. Finally, oral language proficiency contributed to misclassifications in the ESL group.     

The relations of early phonological awareness,rapid‐naming and speed of processing with the development of spelling and reading: a longitudinal examination

Phonological awareness has been found to be strongly related to spelling. Findings on the relations between rapid‐naming and spelling are less consistent and have been suggested to be shared with speed of processing. This study set out to examine these relations in spelling and reading of Hebrew. Children attending the regular educational system were followed longitudinally (N = 70): phonological awareness, rapid‐naming and speed of processing were tested in kindergarten and in grade 1, and spelling and reading were tested in grade 2. Kindergarten and grade 1 rapid‐naming predicted spelling and word reading, and grade 1 phonological awareness predicted spelling, word reading and decoding. Speed of processing was an insignificant predictor. The findings extend the role of phonological awareness in spelling to an orthography with partial phonological representations and concurrently suggest weak relations. The results further suggest a link between rapid‐naming and orthographic knowledge, which may not be explained by shared variance with speed of processing.     

Predicting delay in reading achievement in a highly transparent language

A random sample of 91 preschool children was assessed prior to receiving formal reading instruction. Verbal and nonverbal measures were used as predictors for the time of instruction required to accurately decode pseudowords in the highly orthographically regular Finnish language. After 2 years, participants were divided into four groups depending on the duration of instruction they had required to reach 90 % accuracy in their reading of pseudowords. Participants were classified as precocious decoders (PD), who could read at school entry; early decoders (ED), who learned to read within the first 4 months of Grade 1; ordinary decoders (OD), who learned to read within 9 months; and late decoders (LD), who failed to reach the criterion after 18 months of reading instruction at Grade 2. Phonological awareness played a significant role only in differentiating PD from ED and OD. However, phonological awareness failed to predict the delayed learning process of LD. LD differed from all other groups in visual analogical reasoning in an analysis not containing phonological awareness measures. Letter knowledge and visual analogical reasoning explained above 90% of the PD-LD difference. Preschool composite (objects, colors, and digits) naming speed measures best predicted reading fluency at the end of Grade 2. The supportive role of orthographic knowledge in phonological awareness, the role of visual analogical reasoning, and the inability of phonological measures to discriminate late decoders are discussed.     

Cross-cultural similarities in the predictors of reading acquisition

Measures of Chinese character/English word recognition, phonological awareness, speeded naming, visual-spatial skill, and processing speed were administered to 190 kindergarten students in Hong Kong and 128 kindergarten and grade 1 students in the United States. Across groups, the strongest predictor of reading itself was phonological awareness; visual processing did not predict reading. For both groups, speed of processing strongly predicted speeded naming, visual processing, and phonological awareness. Despite diversities of culture, language, and orthography to be learned, models of early reading development were remarkably similar across cultures and first and second language orthographies.     

Predictors of Chinese reading and literacy skills among Chinese school children: a 3-year longitudinal study

Abstract

This study aims to identify the predictors of Chinese reading and literacy skills among Chinese school children in Taiwan. Participants recruited in the study were 182 Grade 1 elementary school students. First, data were collected on these students’ literacy skills, which comprised morphological awareness, orthography processing, visual perception skills, phonological awareness, and rapid automatised naming. In Grade 2, data were collected from these students on their word decoding skills, which comprised character recognition and reading fluency. Finally, in Grade 3, data were collected on the Chinese comprehension skills of the same students. A structural equation model examined the direct and indirect effects of students’ literacy skills at Grade 1 on their reading comprehension at Grade 3, with students’ word decoding at Grade 2 acting as a mediator. Results showed that reading comprehension of students at Grade 3 was predicted by their literacy skills at Grade 1.     

Predicting Foreign Language Reading Achievement in Elementary School Students

This study examined whether factors affecting first language reading acquisition also affect English Foreign Language (EFL) reading acquisition. Hebrew (L1) and EFL reading related measures were administrated to 145 fourth graders from the north of Israel who were beginning their first year of English instruction. Results from a Linear Structural Equational Analysis (LISREL) showed that the Hebrew independent variable consisting of morphological and phonological awareness, orthographic ability, and word reading (accuracy and speed) predicted EFL knowledge of letter sounds and names, word attack and reading comprehension. In addition to the Hebrew independent variable, English word recognition (accuracy and speed) predicted English reading comprehension. These results support the Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis (LCDH), which argues for core linguistic abilities that influence first and subsequent language reading acquisition.     

The role of stroke knowledge in reading and spelling in Chinese

The present study examined the types of orthographic knowledge that are important in learning to read and spell Chinese words in a 2‐year longitudinal study following 289 Hong Kong Chinese children from Grade 1 to Grade 2. Multiple regression results showed that radical knowledge significantly predicted children's word reading and spelling performance across the years. Stroke knowledge contributed both concurrently (Grade 1) and longitudinally (Grade 2) to children's spelling performance after controlling for rapid naming, phonological awareness, morphological awareness and radical knowledge. These findings support the significance of radical knowledge in Chinese reading and spelling and the specific role of stroke order knowledge in Chinese spelling. The findings have implications for the design of an effective curriculum for teaching children to spell Chinese characters.     

Poor Reading: A Deficit in Skill-Automatization or a Phonological Deficit?

This study examined whether the characteristic reading speed impairment of German dyslexic children results from a general skill-automatization deficit sensu Nicolson and Fawcett (1990) or from more specific deficits in visual naming speed and phonological skills. The hypothesized skill-automatization deficit was assessed by balancing, peg moving, and visual search. Rapid "automatized" naming tasks served as measures of impaired visual naming speed, and the phonological deficit was assessed by speech perception, phonological sensitivity, and phonological memory tasks. Dyslexic German children and age-matched control children (all boys) were tested at the end of Grade 2 and as participants of a longitudinal study also at the beginning of Grade 1. No evidence for a skill-automatization deficit was found, as the dyslexic children did not differ at all on the balancing tasks and little on the other nonverbal skill tasks. However, the dyslexic children showed impaired visual naming speed and impaired phonological memory performance that were observed not only in Grade 2 but also before learning to read. Overall, the findings support the conclusion that, even in regular orthographies, difficulties in learning to read are due to a phonological deficit and not to a general skill-automatization deficit.     

Growth and predictors of change in English language learners' reading comprehension

This study modelled reading comprehension trajectories in Grades 4 to 6 English language learners (ELLs = 400), with different home language backgrounds, and in English monolinguals (EL1s = 153), and examined an augmented Simple View of Reading model. The contribution of Grade 1 (early) and Grade 4 (late) cognitive, language and word‐level reading to Grade 6 reading comprehension was examined. The reading comprehension trajectory was non‐linear in ELLs but linear in EL1s. Syntax predicted consistently rate of growth in reading comprehension. ELLs consistently underperformed EL1s on reading comprehension. Word‐level reading and all components of language (vocabulary, syntax and listening comprehension) remained stable predictors of Grade 6 reading comprehension. Grade 1 phonological awareness, naming speed and working memory predicted reading comprehension in Grade 6, as did Grade 4 phonological short‐term memory. Results support an augmented Simple View of Reading that includes cognitive, word‐level and language components, and underscore the importance of considering developmental changes in the constructs.     

Who benefits from training in linguistic awareness in the first grade, and what components show training effects?

Who among first graders benefit from training in linguistic awareness, and what components of the linguistic awareness are most amenable to training effects? At the beginning of Grade 1 prospective at-risk readers (26 out of 117) were identified on the basis of very low phonological awareness. In the autumn term, they received practice in linguistic awareness. When compared to controls individually matched controls on phonological awareness, listening comprehension, and WISC-R scores, the intervention group showed a more rapid building-up of phonological awareness, especially phoneme-blending ability, as well as superiority in word recognition, spelling, and listening comprehension, which were sustained until the end of Grade 1. Reading comprehension could not be compared because 8 of the 26 controls did not read fluently enough to be tested. The half of the control group with cognitive delays, receiving normal special education instruction, performed consistently worse than their matched pairs in the intervention group. The latter group showed development of phonological awareness, decoding, and spelling equal to that of the cognitively nearly average intervention group and their matched pairs in the control group, who received no additional support. These three groups, originally defined as at-risk readers, performed at the level of other preschool nonreaders at the end of Grade 1. In sum, the children with cognitive delays benefitted from training in linguistic awareness. The results underscore the importance of phoneme synthesis skills in beginning reading and spelling, at least with regular languages.     

Cognitive predictors of word reading in Sinhala

We examined whether akshara knowledge, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and RAN predict variability in word and nonword reading skills in Grade 1–4 children (N?=?200) learning to read Sinhala. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that akshara knowledge had the strongest unique association with both word and nonword reading accuracy across grades. Akshara knowledge and RAN predicted word and nonword reading fluency. The impact of phonological memory and syllable awareness on reading was mostly mediated by akshara knowledge, and phoneme awareness was not uniquely associated with word reading skills in any grade. These results suggest that there are multiple cognitive correlates of accurate and fluent word reading in Sinhala, and akshara knowledge is the most important predictor of learning to read words. The findings have implications for the literacy acquisition, development, and instruction in alphasyllabaries.

     

The contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension in early stages of reading

The contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension in Hebrew was studied in 298 second grade students who practiced two types of inflections, plural and possessive. Reading tasks at the beginning and end of the school year indicated that all improved on all tests in that period. Orthographic word recognition and morphological awareness predicted reading comprehension at the end of year. Students with low (LPD) and high (HPD) phonological decoding skills clearly differed qualitatively in reading comprehension. In the HPD students it was predicted by awareness of possessive inflections; in the LPD students it was predicted by orthographic word recognition ability. The results highlight the importance of examining the different components of morphological awareness in readers with different levels of phonological decoding ability.     

Reading fluency: The whole is more than the parts

This study examined the relative contributions of phonological awareness, orthographic pattern recognition, and rapid letter naming to fluent word and connected-text reading within a dyslexic sample of 123 children in second and third grades. Participants were assessed on a variety of fluency measures and reading subskills. Correlations and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were carried out to explore these relationships. The results demonstrate that phonological awareness, rapid letter naming, and orthographic pattern recognition contribute to word-reading skills. Furthermore, rapid naming, orthographic pattern recognition, and word reading fluency moderately predict different dimensions of connected-text reading (i.e., rate, accuracy, and comprehension) whereas phonological awareness contributes only to the comprehension dimension of connected-text reading. The findings support the multidimensional nature of fluency in which the whole is more than its parts.     

Letter names, letter sounds and phonological awareness: an examination of kindergarten children across letters and of letters across children

In this study 149 kindergarten children were assessed for knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, phonological awareness, and cognitive abilities. Through this it examined child and letter characteristics influencing the acquisition of alphabetic knowledge in a naturalistic context, the relationship between letter-sound knowledge and letter-name knowledge, and the prediction of Grade 1 phonological awareness and word identification from these variables. Knowledge of letter sounds was better for vowels and for letters with consonant–vowel names than for those with vowel–consonant names or names bearing little relationship to their sounds. However, there were anomalies within each category reflecting characteristics of the individual letters. Structural equation modelling showed that cognitive ability, comprising receptive vocabulary, non-verbal reasoning, rapid automatized naming of colours, and phonological memory significantly contributed to alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness. In turn, letter-name knowledge but not phonological awareness predicted letter-sound knowledge and subsequent reading skill.This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the first author. Thank you is extended to the participating schools and children and to Ian Newby-Clark for his orientation to AMOS. Michelle Bell, Shelly Moretti and Jodi Page have since graduated from the University of Guelph     

Reading comprehension skills of young adults with childhood diagnoses of dyslexia

This study explores the contribution of cognitive processes to comprehension skills in adults who suffered from childhood developmental dyslexia (CD). The performance of adults with CD (ages 17 to 23), chronological age-matched (CA) adults, and reading level-matched (RL) children was compared on measures of phonological processing, naming speed, working memory (WM), general knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension. The results showed that adults with CD scored lower on measures of phonological processing, naming speed, WM, general knowledge, and vocabulary when compared to CA readers but were comparable to RL children on the majority of process measures. Phonological processing, naming speed, vocabulary, general knowledge, and listening comprehension contributed independent variance to reading comprehension accuracy, whereas WM, intelligence, phonological processing, and listening comprehension contributed independent variance to comprehension fluency. Adults with CD scored lower than CA adults and higher than RL children on measures of lexical processing, WM, and listening comprehension when word recognition and intelligence were partialed from the analysis. In summary, constraints in phonological processing and naming speed mediate only some of the influence of high-order processes on reading comprehension. Furthermore, adults with CD experience difficulties in WM, listening comprehension, and vocabulary independently of their word recognition problems and intellectual ability.     

The relationship of phonological awareness, rapid naming, and verbal memory to severe reading and spelling disability.

The present study examined the relationship of phonological awareness, naming speed, and verbal memory to the scores obtained from five tests assessing word attack, word identification, reading comprehension, and spelling skills in 54 children with severe reading disabilities (48 boys and 6 girls; M age = 9 years, 7 months). Multiple regression analyses indicated that the best predictor of achievement across the five academic tests was the Verbal Comprehension factor from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised. Age, socioeconomic status (SES), and externalizing behavior problems were also significant predictors of achievement, depending on the academic measure. After controlling for age, SES, behavior problems, and intelligence, the phonological awareness task added significantly to the prediction of word attack, spelling, and reading comprehension scores; rapid letter naming added significantly to the prediction of word identification and prose passage speed and accuracy scores; and a word-list memory task added significantly to the prediction of word recognition scores. These results suggest that several independent processes interact to determine the extent and severity of reading problems.