Psychological and demographic correlates of early academic skill development among American Indian and Alaska Native youth: A growth modeling study.

Research regarding the development of early academic skills among American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) students has been very limited to date. Using a nationally representative sample of AIAN, Hispanic, African American, and White children at school entry, the authors used latent growth models to estimate the associations among poverty, low parental education, living in a rural location, as well as child attitudes toward learning and internalizing/externalizing behaviors, with mathematical and reading cognitive skill development across the 1st 4 years of school. Results indicate that AIAN children entered kindergarten with scores on both mathematical and reading cognitive tests that were comparable to their peers from other ethnic groups of color. Importantly, all children who entered kindergarten with lower cognitive skill scores also acquired skills more slowly over the next 4 years. Having a positive approach to learning at the start of kindergarten was associated with cognitive skill levels at school entry nearly 1 standard deviation above the population average. Results are discussed with reference to the shared early educational profiles observed between AIAN and other children of color. These findings provide a much-needed update regarding early academic development among AIAN children. (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)     

Prediction of basic reading skills among young children with diverse linguistic backgrounds.

This study was conducted to assess the relative predictive validity of phonological processing, listening comprehension, general cognitive ability, and visual-motor coordination against early reading skills within a sample of children from diverse linguistic backgrounds. 65 children were tested in kindergarten with measures from each of the aforementioned areas, and in Grade 1 with measures of letter and word recognition. Among all predictor variables, phonological processing was the only significant predictor of Grade 1 reading. Language(s) spoken in the home added to the prediction of letter recognition. Results suggest that phonological processing may contribute to the acquisition of basic reading skills for children with varied language experiences in the same way as it does for monolingual children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Growth in reading skills of children from diverse linguistic backgrounds: Findings from a 5-year longitudinal study.

This article reports on the results of a longitudinal investigation of the reading development of a sample of 824 children (406 girls, 418 boys). The sample included 689 native English-speaking (L1) children and 135 English-language learners (ELLs) representing 33 different native languages. In kindergarten and 4th grade, children's word reading, spelling, phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and working memory skills were assessed with standardized and experimental measures. In addition, word reading was assessed from kindergarten through 4th grade, and reading comprehension in 4th grade. Comparisons of reading skills between the ELLs and the L1 speakers demonstrated that despite slightly lower performance of the ELLs on several kindergarten tasks, differences at 4th grade were negligible. Fourth-grade word reading was predicted by the same kindergarten tasks for both language groups, and prediction of reading comprehension differed by only 1 task. Finally, the trajectory of word reading was nonlinear for both groups, although predictors of this trajectory differed between groups. The findings suggest that early identification models established through research with L1 speakers are appropriate for identifying ELLs at risk for reading difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Development of Reading in Children Who Speak English as a Second Language.

Patterns of reading development were examined in native English-speaking (L1) children and children who spoke English as a second language (ESL). Participants were 978 (790 L1 speakers and 188 ESL speakers) Grade 2 children involved in a longitudinal study that began in kindergarten. In kindergarten and Grade 2, participants completed standardized and experimental measures including reading, spelling, phonological processing, and memory. All children received phonological awareness instruction in kindergarten and phonics instruction in Grade 1. By the end of Grade 2, the ESL speakers' reading skills were comparable to those of L1 speakers, and ESL speakers even outperformed L1 speakers on several measures. The findings demonstrate that a model of early identification and intervention for children at risk is beneficial for ESL speakers and also suggest that the effects of bilingualism on the acquisition of early reading skills are not negative and may be positive. (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)     

Reading achievement gaps, correlates, and moderators of early reading achievement: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) kindergarten to first grade sample.

This study estimated reading achievement gaps in different ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic groups of 1st graders in the U.S. compared with specific reference groups and identified statistically significant correlates and moderators of early reading achievement. A subset of 2,296 students nested in 184 schools from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) kindergarten to 1st-grade cohort were analyzed with hierarchical linear models. With child-level background differences controlled, significant 1st-grade reading differentials were found in African American children (-0.51 SD units below Whites), boys (-0.31 SD units below girls), and children from high-poverty households (-0.61 to -1.0 SD units below well-to-do children). In all 3 comparisons, the size of the reading gaps increased from kindergarten entry to 1st grade. Reading level at kindergarten entry was a significant child-level correlate, related to poverty status. At the school level, class size and elementary teacher certification rate were significant reading correlates in 1st grade. Cross-level interactions indicated reading achievement in African American children was moderated by the schools students attended, with attendance rates and reading time at home explaining the variance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training phonological skills and letter knowledge in children at risk for dyslexia: A comparison of three kindergarten intervention programs.

The authors compared the effects of 3 kindergarten intervention programs on at-risk children's subsequent reading and spelling skills. From a sample of 726 screened kindergarten children, 138 were selected as children potentially at risk for dyslexia and randomly assigned to 1 of 3 training conditions: (a) letter-sound training, (b) phonological awareness training, and (c) combined training in phonological awareness and letter knowledge. A control group of 115 unselected ("normal") kindergarten children was recruited to evaluate the training effects. Results indicated that the combined training yielded the strongest effects on reading and spelling in Grades 1 and 2. Thus, these findings confirm the phonological linkage hypothesis in that combining phonological awareness training with instruction in letter-sound knowledge has more powerful effects on subsequent literacy achievement than phonological awareness training alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Kindergarten Prediction of Reading Skills: A Longitudinal Comparative Analysis.

There is considerable focus in public policy on screening children for reading difficulties. Sixty years of research have not resolved questions of what constructs assessed in kindergarten best predict subsequent reading outcomes. This study assessed the relative importance of multiple measures obtained in a kindergarten sample for the prediction of reading outcomes at the end of 1st and 2nd grades. Analyses revealed that measures of phonological awareness, letter sound knowledge, and naming speed consistently accounted for the unique variance across reading outcomes whereas measures of perceptual skills and oral language and vocabulary did not. These results show that measures of letter name and letter sound knowledge, naming speed, and phonological awareness are good predictors of multiple reading outcomes in Grades 1 and 2. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oral language and code-related precursors to reading: Evidence from a longitudinal structural model.

This study examined code-related and oral language precursors to reading in a longitudinal study of 626 children from preschool through 4th grade. Code-related precursors, including print concepts and phonological awareness, and oral language were assessed in preschool and kindergarten. Reading accuracy and reading comprehension skills were examined in 1st through 4th grades. Results demonstrated that (a) the relationship between code-related precursors and oral language is strong during preschool; (b) there is a high degree of continuity over time of both code-related and oral language abilities; (c) during early elementary school, reading ability is predominantly determined by the level of print knowledge and phonological awareness a child brings from kindergarten; and (d) in later elementary school, reading accuracy and reading comprehension appear to be 2 separate abilities that are influenced by different sets of skills. (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 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)     

Teacher–child interactions and children’s achievement trajectories across kindergarten and first grade.

This study examined the extent to which the quality of teacher–child interactions and children’s achievement levels at kindergarten entry were associated with children’s achievement trajectories. Rural students (n = 147) were enrolled in a longitudinal study from kindergarten through first grade. Growth trajectories (initial level and slope) were modeled with hierarchical linear modeling for 3 areas of achievement: word reading, phonological awareness, and mathematics. Cross-classified analyses examined the extent to which quality of teacher–child interactions and children’s starting level predicted achievement growth rates over 2 years, and they also accounted for the changing nesting structure of the data. Results indicated that achievement at kindergarten entry predicted children’s growth for all 3 outcomes. Further, first-grade teachers’ strong emotional support related to greater growth in students’ phonological awareness. Emotional and instructional support in first grade moderated the relationship between initial achievement and growth in word reading. Kindergarten classroom organization moderated the relationship between initial achievement and growth in mathematics. The implications of schooling for early growth trajectories are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speech perception, vocabulary, and the development of reading skills in english among Korean- and English-speaking children.

This study examined the roles of speech perception and phonological processing in reading and spelling acquisition for native and nonnative speakers of English in the 1st grade. The performance of 50 children (23 native English speakers and 27 native Korean speakers) was examined on tasks assessing reading and spelling, phonological processing, speech perception, and receptive vocabulary at the start and end of the school year. Korean-speaking children outperformed native English speakers on each of the literacy measures at the start and end of 1st grade, despite differences in their initial phonological representations and processing skills. Furthermore, speech perception and phonological processing were important contributors to early literacy skills, independent of oral language skills, for children from both language groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and schooling effects on emergent literacy and early reading skills.

This study examined the effects of age and schooling on emergent literacy and early reading skills of 337 children from low-income backgrounds. Children were followed longitudinally from the end of Head Start to the end of 1st grade. A subset of the sample (n?=?183) was followed through the end of 2nd grade. The oldest children in preschool and kindergarten had significantly stronger emergent literacy skills than classmates who were younger by 10 months. These differences did not translate to differences in reading skill at the end of 1st or 2nd grade. Children who began school a year earlier than same-age peers outperformed these peers on measures of both emergent literacy skills and early reading skills. The impact of a year of schooling on emergent literacy skills was 1.7 times greater than the impact of other processes associated with age. The impact of a year of schooling on early reading was 4.3 times stronger than the effect of age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Home literacy activities and their influence on early literacy skills.

The relationship between the home environments of 66 children (aged 5.4–6.7 yrs) and their language and literacy development was examined. Parents (aged 28–46 yrs) of the children were interviewed regarding demographic information and home visits were conducted in which parents were observed reading with their children and interviewed about specific literacy practices. Children were assessed at approximately 9 mo intervals. After accounting for child age, parent education, and child ability as indexed by scores on a rapid automatized naming task and Block Design of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence—Revised, shared book reading at home made no contribution to the prediction of the literacy skills of letter name and letter sound knowledge in kindergarten. In contrast, home activities involving letters predicted modest and significant amounts of variance. For the areas of receptive vocabulary and phonological sensitivity, neither shared book reading nor letter activities were predictive. Follow-up to mid-Grade 2 underscored the importance of letter name/sound knowledge and phonological sensitivity in kindergarten in accounting for individual differences in later achievement in reading comprehension, phonological spelling and conventional spelling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of an adapted interactive writing intervention on kindergarten children's phonological awareness, spelling, and early reading development: A contextualized approach to instruction.

Using a pretest-posttest comparison-group design, this 16-week study investigated the effects of 2 instructional approaches on the phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, and early reading of kindergarten children. The primary goal was to compare a form of contextualized instruction based on an adapted interactive writing program with a field-tested program of metalinguistic games. For instructional purposes, the children in each treatment group were divided into small intervention classes, with groupings based on children's common strengths and needs. Each week, these classes met with trained literacy tutors for 4 20-min lessons. Pretest and posttest measures provided data on children's phonological awareness, spelling, and reading development. Statistical analyses of the data indicated no between-groups differences with regard to phonological awareness and spelling achievement. In contrast, results revealed statistically significant differences between the 2 groups on word identification, passage comprehension, and word reading development measures, with the adapted interactive writing group demonstrating greater achievement. These findings verify that the children participating in a contextualized program matched or exceeded the achievement of the children participating in a structured program of metalinguistic games. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional Reactions to the Outcomes of Decisions: The Role of Counterfactual Thought in the Experience of Regret and Disappointment

Children's phonological sensitivity is a strong predictor of the development of reading skills. Recent evidence indicates that phonological sensitivity and reading are reciprocally related. That is, phonological sensitivity facilitates the development of early reading and early reading facilitates the development of phonological sensitivity. Whereas evidence for this reciprocal relation has come from studies with school-age children, this study examined the relation between phonological sensitivity and letter knowledge in 97 middle-income 4- and 5-year-old children in a 1-year longitudinal study. Multiple regression analyses revealed that phonological sensitivity predicted growth in letter knowledge, and letter knowledge predicted growth in phonological sensitivity when controlling for children's age and oral language abilities. These results indicate that the reciprocal relation between reading and phonological sensitivity is present relatively early in the development of literacy skills, prior to the onset of formal reading instruction.     

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)     

Long-Term Effects of Phoneme Awareness and Letter Sound Training: An Intervention Study With Children at Risk for Dyslexia.

Positive long-term effects of phoneme awareness training in kindergarten were found in this study with children of dyslexic parents. Thirty-five at-risk children (attending 26 different classes) participated in an intensive 17-week program in their regular kindergarten classes designed to help them improve in phoneme awareness. Follow-up measures indicated that the trained children outperformed 47 untrained at-risk controls in both word and nonword reading in Grades 2, 3, and 7. For the very poorest readers, significant effects were found--even in Grade 7 reading comprehension. However, the trained at-risk children were found to lag behind a 2nd control group of 41 not-at-risk children in most aspects of reading. Treatment-resistant children had relatively poor phonological representations of known words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)