Phonological Processing Skills and Early Reading Abilities in Hong Kong Chinese Kindergarteners Learning to Read English as a Second Language.

The present 9-month longitudinal study investigated relations between Chinese native language phonological processing skills and early Chinese and English reading abilities among 227 kindergarteners in Hong Kong. Phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and short-term verbal memory differed in their relations to concurrent and subsequent Chinese and English word recognition. The significant bidirectional relations between phonological awareness and Chinese reading ability remained even after accounting for the variance due to age, vocabulary, and visual skills performance. When all predictors were considered simultaneously, only phonological awareness remained a significant predictor of Chinese and English reading abilities both concurrently and longitudinally. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of reading-related phonological processing abilities: New evidence of bidirectional causality from a latent variable longitudinal study.

Results from a longitudinal correlational study of 244 children from kindergarten through 2nd grade indicate that young children's phonological processing abilities are well-described by 5 correlated latent abilities: phonological analysis, phonological synthesis, phonological coding in working memory, isolated naming, and serial naming. These abilities are characterized by different developmental rates and remarkably stable individual differences. Decoding did not exert a causal influence on subsequent phonological processing abilities, but letter-name knowledge did. Causal relations between phonological processing abilities and reading-related knowledge are bidirectional: Phonological processing abilities exert strong causal influences on word decoding; letter-name knowledge exerts a more modest causal influence on subsequent phonological processing abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changing relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading as children develop from beginning to skilled readers: A 5-year longitudinal study.

Relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading skills were examined in a longitudinal correlational study of 216 children. Phonological processing abilities, word-level reading skills, and vocabulary were assessed annually from kindergarten through 4th grade, as the children developed from beginning to skilled readers. Individual differences in phonological awareness were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading for every time period examined. Individual differences in serial naming and vocabulary were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading initially, but these relations faded with development. Individual differences in letter-name knowledge were related to subsequent individual differences in phonological awareness and serial naming, but there were no relations between individual differences in word level reading and any subsequent phonological processing ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors related to English reading performance in children with Chinese as a first language: More evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological processing.

Parallel measures of phonological, syntactic, and orthographic processing skill and reading were administered in English and in Chinese to 65 children whose 1st language (L1) was Cantonese and whose 2nd language (L2) was English. Phonological skill was correlated across L1 and L2. Phonological skill in both L1 and L2 was correlated with L2 reading and contributed a unique variance to L2 reading, even though the children's L1 was not written in an alphabetic orthography, whereas the 2nd language had an alphabetic orthography. This research adds to a growing body of evidence for cross-language transfer of phonological processing in L2 learning of English-as-a-Second-Language students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental changes in the manifestation of a phonological deficit in dyslexic children learning to read a regular orthography.

In a longitudinal study, the development of phonological processing abilities was studied in 19 dyslexic, 17 weak, and 19 normal readers learning to read in Dutch. Among other abilities, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming were assessed in kindergarten, in 1st grade, and in 6th grade. Dyslexic and weak readers had impairments in rapid naming from kindergarten through 6th grade. Their impairments in phonological awareness at the level of phonemes became manifest in 1st grade and tended to disappear at the end of primary school. However, in a second cross-sectional study, including 13 dyslexic and 25 normal readers, dyslexic children's awareness of phonemes was hampered when task demands increased. The various manifestations of a phonological deficit follow distinct developmental pathways. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The neuropsychological test performance of drug-abusing patients: An examination of latent cognitive abilities and associated risk factors.

The purpose of this study was to examine the latent structure of neuropsychological abilities of drug-abusing patients. Four factors were identified in an exploratory factor analysis (N = 329) and a subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (N = 258): Executive Functioning, Verbal Ability, Memory, and Speed. Education, years of regular alcohol use, number of substance use dependence disorders, percentage of days of heavy drinking in the previous year, depression, familial alcoholism, premorbid level of cognitive functioning, liver functioning, and previous head injuries were identified as risk factors to these latent abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Specific contributions of phonological abilities to early reading acquisition: Results from a Dutch latent variable longitudinal study.

Contributions of phonological abilities to early reading acquisition were examined in a longitudinal study of 166 Dutch children from kindergarten through 2nd grade. Various phonological abilities, nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary, and letter knowledge were assessed in kindergarten and Grade 1. Reading and arithmetic were examined in 1st and 2nd grades. The importance of individual differences in phonological ability for subsequent reading acquisition changed over time. At first, the effects of phonological abilities increased, but after Grade 1, these effects disappeared. Phonological awareness and rapid naming had independent and specific influences on reading achievement. Verbal working memory was associated with both reading and arithmetic acquisition. The results tend to support an interactive view of the relation between development of phonological abilities and learning to read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of young readers' phonological processing abilities.

In a cross-sectional study of 184 kindergarten and 2nd grade students, confirmatory factor analysis of a battery of phonological and control tasks were used to compare alternative models of young readers' phonological processing abilities. The authors found evidence for 5 distinct but correlated phonological processing abilities. Latent phonological processing abilities were more highly correlated with general cognitive ability than previous reports would suggest, although they accounted for variance in word recognition independent of general cognitive ability. The results of this study, coupled with those of a previous study of prereaders, suggest that phonological abilities are best conceptualized as relatively stable and coherent individual difference attributes, as opposed to relatively unstable measures of reading-related knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation Between Naming and Literacy in Children With Word-Finding Difficulties.

Difficulties with picture naming tasks are associated with literacy problems. When given naming tasks, children with dyslexia are slower to produce words and have a higher proportion of errors (M. Wolf & P. G. Bowers, 1999). However, little is known about the relation between literacy and naming in other populations. This study investigated this relation in 20 children (age 6 years 6 months to 7 years 11 months) with word-finding difficulties. The children in the sample performed very poorly on assessments of naming, but unlike children with dyslexia, they were found to have decoding and spelling abilities within the normal range. In addition, their abilities on phonological awareness tasks were at a similar level to their decoding abilities. In contrast, their performance on reading comprehension and language comprehension measures was significantly worse than their performance on decoding, spelling, and rhyme awareness measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in latent neuropsychological abilities at addictions treatment entry.

The latent structure of neuropsychological abilities and risk factors for impairment were examined in 197 persons entering addictions treatment. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded 4 factors: Executive, Memory, Verbal, and Processing Speed. The measurement model was consistent with evidence that neuropsychological test performance is factorially complex and supported by multiple brain regions. Path analyses showed that risk factors explained 34-57% of the true variance in abilities. Age, education, and medical status had the most generalized and robust associations with abilities. Drug use disorder diagnoses, childhood behavior problems, familial alcoholism, and psychopathology were also significantly related to specific latent abilities. Knowledge of neuropsychological impairment may be clinically useful, and selected risk factors may help treatment providers decide which clients should receive formal neuropsychological assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cattell-Horn-Carroll cognitive abilities and their effects on reading decoding skills: g has indirect effects, more specific abilities have direct effects.

This study employed structural equation modeling to examine the effects of Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) abilities on reading decoding skills using five age-differentiated subsamples from the standardization sample of the Woodcock-Johnson III (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001). Using the Spearman Model including only g, strong direct effects of g on reading decoding skills were demonstrated at all ages. Using the Two-Stratum Model including g and broad abilities, direct effects of the broad abilities Long-Term Storage and Retrieval, Processing Speed, Crystallized Intelligence, Short-Term Memory, and Auditory Processing on reading decoding skills were demonstrated at select ages. Using the Three-Stratum Model including g, broad abilities, and narrow abilities, direct effects of the broad ability Processing Speed and the narrow abilities Associative Memory, Listening Ability, General Information, Memory Span, and Phonetic Coding were demonstrated at select ages. Across both the Two-Stratum Model and the Three-Stratum Model at all ages, g had very large but indirect effects. The findings suggest that school psychologists should interpret measures of some specific cognitive abilities when conducting psychoeducational assessments designed to explain reading decoding skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonemes, rhymes, and intelligence as predictors of children's responsiveness to remedial reading instruction: evidence from a longitudinal intervention study

We present an analysis of data from a longitudinal intervention study with 7-year-old poor readers (Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994). A battery of cognitive and phonological tasks administered before the intervention began revealed five separate factors: Phoneme Manipulation, Rhyme, Verbal Ability, Nonverbal Ability and Phonological Memory. We assessed the extent to which these factors were predictive of children's responsiveness to the teaching interventions they received. For reading accuracy, Verbal Ability, Nonverbal Ability, Phonological Memory, and Rhyme made no significant contribution to predicting responsiveness to teaching, while Phoneme Manipulation was a very strong predictor. However for reading comprehension, Verbal ability (but not nonverbal ability) made an additional unique contribution to predicting responsiveness to teaching. The results are discussed in the context of current theories of the role of intelligence and phonological skills in learning to read.     

Reading and Phonological Awareness in Williams Syndrome.

This article describes the relationship between reading, phonological awareness abilities (PA), and intelligence in a group of 16 individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) and in a group of 16 typically developing children, matched for mental age. The individuals with WS were impaired in passage comprehension, in some areas of PA investigated (syllable deletion and rhyme detection), and in nonword reading accuracy, a measure of grapheme-phoneme conversion. This latter finding is relevant, considering that in Italy regular print-to-sound correspondence is the most practiced teaching routine in the early phases of learning to read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interaction of concreteness and phonological similarity in verbal working memory.

Although phonological representations have been a primary focus of verbal working memory research, lexical-semantic manipulations also influence performance. In the present study, the authors investigated whether a classic phenomenon in verbal working memory, the phonological similarity effect (PSE), is modulated by a lexical-semantic variable, word concreteness. Phonological overlap and concreteness were factorially manipulated in each of four experiments across which presentation modality (Experiments 1 and 2: visual presentation; Experiments 3 and 4: auditory presentation) and concurrent articulation (present in Experiments 2 and 4) were manipulated. In addition to main effects of each variable, results show a Phonological Overlap × Concreteness interaction whereby the magnitude of the PSE is greater for concrete word lists relative to abstract word lists. This effect is driven by superior item memory for nonoverlapping, concrete lists and is robust to the modality of presentation and concurrent articulation. These results demonstrate that in verbal working memory tasks, there are multiple routes to the phonological form of a word and that maintenance and retrieval occur over more than just a phonological level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Basic processes in reading: Can functional phonological recoding be blocked?

A widely held view is that phonological processing is always involved in lexical access from print, and is automatic in that it cannot be prevented. This claim was assessed in the context of a priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, repetition priming was observed for both pseudohomophone-word pairs (e.g., brane-brain) and morphologically related word pairs (e.g., marked-mark) in the context of lexical decision. In Experiment 2, subjects searched the prime for the presence of a target letter and then made a lexical decision to a subsequent letter string. Phonological priming from a pseudohomophone was eliminated following letter search of the prime, whereas morphological priming persisted. These results are inconsistent with the claim that a) lexical access from print requires preliminary phonological processing, and b) functional phonological processing cannot be blocked. They are, however, consistent with the conclusion that, for intact skilled readers, lexical access can be accomplished on the basis of orthographic processing alone. These results join a growing body of evidence supporting the claim that there exist numerous points in visual word recognition at which processing can be stopped. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading Acquisition, Developmental Dyslexia, and Skilled Reading Across Languages: A Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory.

The development of reading depends on phonological awareness across all languages so far studied. Languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography. This results in developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies and the manifestation of dyslexia across orthographies. Differences in lexical representations and reading across languages leave developmental "footprints" in the adult lexicon. The lexical organization and processing strategies that are characteristic of skilled reading in different orthographies are affected by different developmental constraints in different writing systems. The authors develop a novel theoretical framework to explain these cross-language data, which they label a psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading and its development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bilingualism, Language Proficiency, and Learning to Read in Two Writing Systems.

Two hundred and four 5- and 6-year-olds who were monolingual English-, bilingual English-Chinese-, or Chinese-speaking children beginning to learn English (2nd-language learners) were compared on phonological awareness and word decoding tasks in English and Chinese. Phonological awareness developed in response to language exposure and instruction but, once established, transferred across languages for both bilinguals and 2nd-language learners. In contrast, decoding ability developed separately for each language as a function of proficiency and instruction in that language and did not transfer to the other language. Therefore, there was no overall effect of bilingualism on learning to read: Performance depended on the structure of the language, proficiency in that language, and instructional experiences with that writing system. These results point to the importance of evaluating the features of the languages and instructional context in which children become biliterate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental models of learning to read Chinese words.

What is the nature of learning to read Chinese across grade levels? This study tested 199 kindergartners, 172 second graders, and 165 fifth graders on 12 different tasks purportedly tapping constructs representing phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic processing, and subcharacter processing. Confirmatory factor analyses comparing alternative models of these 4 constituents of Chinese word reading revealed different patterns of metalinguistic underpinnings of children's word recognition across grade levels: The best-fitting model for kindergartners represented a print–nonprint dichotomy of constructs. In contrast, 2nd graders showed a fine-grained sensitivity to all 4 hypothesized constructs. Finally, the best-fitting model for 5th graders consisted of a phonological sensitivity construct and a broad lexical morphological–orthographic processing construct. Findings suggest that Hong Kong Chinese children progress from a basic understanding of print versus nonprint to a diversified sensitivity to varied word-reading skills, to a focus on meaning-based word recognition, to the relative exclusion of phonological sensitivity in more advanced readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of emergent literacy and early reading skills in preschool children: Evidence from a latent-variable longitudinal study.

Although research has identified oral language, print knowledge, and phonological sensitivity as important emergent literacy skills for the development of reading, few studies have examined the relations between these aspects of emergent literacy or between these skills during preschool and during later reading. This study examined the joint and unique predictive significance of emergent literacy skills for both later emergent literacy skills and reading in two samples of preschoolers. Ninety-six children (mean age?=?41 months, SD?=?9.41) were followed from early to late preschool, and 97 children (mean age?=?60 months, SD?=?5.41) were followed from late preschool to kindergarten or first grade. Structural equation modeling revealed significant developmental continuity of these skills, particularly for letter knowledge and phonological sensitivity from late preschool to early grade school, both of which were the only unique predictors of decoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of phonological processing and inattentive behavior on reading acquisition.

This article reports the findings from a longitudinal study investigating the influence of phonological processing and inattentive behavior on reading acquisition. Data from individually administered measures of phonological processing and reading, as well as teacher ratings of children's behavior, were collected from a cohort of 132 children at 12-month intervals, from kindergarten to 2nd grade. Results from multiple linear regression analyses employing latent constructs of phonological abilities and inattentive behavior provided support for the hypothesized model, with kindergarten measures of inattentiveness and phonological abilities predicting subsequent reading performance. An analysis of reciprocal relationships among these constructs revealed evidence that inattentiveness also interfered with the acquisition of phonological analysis skills. Implications for reading instruction and reading interventions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)