Literacy development in Canada.

Literacy development has been found to have a considerable influence on individuals' lives, modern society, and its economy. As a consequence, a great deal of attention has been devoted to the facets of literacy, the conditions that facilitate its development, and its impact. This special issue of Canadian Psychology provides a sample of current research programmes carried out on literacy development by Canadian researchers in psychology and education. The topics addressed include emergent literacy, the longitudinal prediction of reading development, the development of oral reading and reading comprehension, literacy development amongst French immersion students, the importance of culturally and developmentally appropriate practices in literacy instruction, and the prevention of reading difficulties. The concluding article provides an overview of the current definitions of learning/reading disabilities in Canadian provinces and territories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 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)     

Literacy Learning of At-Risk First-Grade Students in the Reading Recovery Early Intervention.

This study investigated the effectiveness and efficiency of the Reading Recovery early intervention. At-risk 1st-grade students were randomly assigned to receive the intervention during the 1st or 2nd half of the school year. High-average and low-average students from the same classrooms provided additional comparisons. Thirty-seven teachers from across the United States used a Web-based system to register participants (n = 148), received random assignment of the at-risk students from this system, and submitted complete data sets. Performance levels were measured at 3 points across the year on M. M. Clay's (1993a) observation survey tasks, 2 standardized reading measures, and 2 phonemic awareness measures. The intervention group showed significantly higher performance compared with the random control group and no differences compared with average groups. Further analyses explored the efficiency of Reading Recovery to identify children for early intervention service and subsequent long-term literacy support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Viewing the Television Program Between the Lions on the Emergent Literacy Skills of Young Children.

Does viewing Between the Lions, an educational television series featuring literacy instruction, improve the emergent literacy skills of kindergarten and first-grade children? Do improvements vary as a function of the child's initial reading risk status? In this study, higher word recognition and standardized reading test scores were noted for all viewers compared with nonviewers. In addition, significantly higher means and accelerated slopes for phonemic awareness and letter-sound tasks were found for viewers compared with nonviewers. Even so, improvements in literacy skills (i.e., speech to print, word building, concepts of print) varied, mostly favoring moderately at-risk to not-at-risk kindergarten children who viewed the program. Kindergarten children at great risk and first graders did not benefit as much from the program. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship of Morphology and Other Language Skills to Literacy Skills in At-Risk Second-Grade Readers and At-Risk Fourth-Grade Writers.

Structural equation modeling evaluated the contribution of phonological, orthographic, morphological, and oral vocabulary factors to word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension outcomes in 98 2nd graders at risk for passing state standards in reading and to those same outcomes plus composing in 97 4th graders at risk for passing state standards in writing. For 2nd-grade children, morphology contributed uniquely to reading comprehension, and oral vocabulary and orthography contributed uniquely to word reading. For 4th-grade children, morphology and oral vocabulary did not contribute uniquely to any outcomes, but morphology and word reading were correlated, and orthography and phonology contributed uniquely to decoding words with affixes. Fourth graders are still learning to coordinate orthographic, phonological, and morphological cues in written words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonemes, Rimes, Vocabulary, and Grammatical Skills as Foundations of Early Reading Development: Evidence From a Longitudinal Study.

The authors present the results of a 2-year longitudinal study of 90 British children beginning at school entry when they were 4 years 9 months old (range = 4 years 2 months to 5 years 2 months). The relationships among early phonological skills, letter knowledge, grammatical skills, and vocabulary knowledge were investigated as predictors of word recognition and reading comprehension. Word recognition skills were consistently predicted by earlier measures of letter knowledge and phoneme sensitivity (but not by vocabulary knowledge, rhyme skills, or grammatical skills). In contrast, reading comprehension was predicted by prior word recognition skills, vocabulary knowledge, and grammatical skills. The results are related to current theories about the role of phonological, grammatical, and vocabulary skills in the development of early reading skills. (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)     

Pathways to Reading: The Role of Oral Language in the Transition to Reading.

What is the role of oral language in reading competence during the transition to school? Is oral language in preschool best conceptualized as vocabulary knowledge or as more comprehensive language including grammar, vocabulary, and semantics? These questions were examined longitudinally using 1,137 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Children were followed from age 3 through 3rd grade, and the results suggest that oral language conceptualized broadly plays both a direct and an indirect role in word recognition during the transition to school and serves as a better foundation for early reading skill than does vocabulary alone. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of both theoretical models of early reading and practical implications for policy and assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond correlational analysis of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS): A classification validity study.

This study investigated the classification validity of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) using a sample of kindergarteners (N = 177). Results indicated the cutoff scores for determining at-risk status on the DIBELS produced substantial false negative rates. Cutoff scores identifying students as at some risk produced substantial false positive rates. At both levels of risk status, the DIBELS showed low positive predictive power, but high negative predictive power, indicating it was far better at identifying students with adequate reading skills than those with inadequate reading skills. Recommendations for appropriate use of the DIBELS for reading screening and suggestions for future research are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's Reading Comprehension Ability: Concurrent Prediction by Working Memory, Verbal Ability, and Component Skills.

The authors report data from a longitudinal study that addresses the relations between working memory capacity and reading comprehension skills in children aged 8, 9, and 11 years. At each time point, the authors assessed children's reading ability, vocabulary and verbal skills, performance on 2 working memory assessments (sentence-span and digit working memory), and component skills of comprehension. At each time point, working memory and component skills of comprehension (inference making, comprehension monitoring, story structure knowledge) predicted unique variance in reading comprehension after word reading ability and vocabulary and verbal ability controls. Further analyses revealed that the relations between reading comprehension and both inference making and comprehension monitoring were not wholly mediated by working memory. Rather, these component skills explained their own unique variance in reading comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Defining Phonological Awareness and Its Relationship to Reading Skills in Low-Literacy Adults.

The main purpose of the study reported here was to investigate the relative importance of complexity of syllable structure and task differences in measuring phonological awareness in low-literacy adults. This study is a replication of a study with children conducted by S. A. Stahl and B. A. Murray (1994). Results indicated that the complexity of syllable structure did indeed better describe the construct of phonological awareness in low-literacy adults. At the same time, the authors also found some differences in the pattern of literacy acquisition for their Spanish adults in comparison with child literacy acquisition in English. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

The comprehensive language approach to early literacy: The interrelationships among vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, and print knowledge among preschool-aged children.

This article describes 2 points of view about the relationship between oral-language and literacy skills: The phonological sensitivity approach posits that vocabulary provides the basis for phonological sensitivity, which then is the key language ability supporting reading, and the comprehensive language approach (CLA) posits that varied language skills interact with literacy knowledge and continue to play a vital role in subsequent reading achievement. The study included 533 Head Start preschool-aged children (M=4 years 9 months) in 2 locations and examined receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, and print knowledge. Partial correlational and regression analyses found results consistent with the CLA approach and evidence of a core deficit in phonological sensitivity, interpreted in a manner consistent with the CLA perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oral language and reading: Reply to Bracken (2005).

Early language competence in preschool relates both directly and indirectly to elementary school reading in both 1st and 3rd grades. Further, comprehensive language skills are more strongly related to early reading than are vocabulary scores alone. In response to a challenge by S. A. Bracken (2005), the current article reaffirms the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Child Care Research Network's (see record 2005-02477-013) findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining Ethnic, Gender, Language, and Socioeconomic Bias in Oral Reading Fluency Scores among Caucasian and Hispanic Students.

Research has demonstrated that oral reading fluency probes are reliable and valid for indexing reading achievement. If these probes are to be used for decision making, bias must be examined for various factors, including ethnicity, gender, language background, and socioeconomic status. Data from nearly 4,000 Caucasian and Hispanic students in grades one through three were used to examine potential bias in oral reading fluency scores predicting Stanford Achievement Test-Ninth Edition (SAT-9; Harcourt Brace & Co., 1997a, 1997b) Total Reading scores. Using a series of hierarchical multiple regression models, bias was first examined using concurrent SAT-9 scores as the criterion and then examined using subsequent SAT-9 scores as the criterion. The results reveal that it is the combination of factors, not any one in isolation, that significantly contributes to intercept bias findings. Overall, home language emerged as the strongest factor influencing bias in the prediction of SAT-9 scores from oral reading fluency scores. The implications of these findings are discussed as related to current and proposed uses of oral reading fluency probes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Becoming a Fluent Reader: Reading Skill and Prosodic Features in the Oral Reading of Young Readers.

Prosodic reading, or reading with expression, is considered one of the hallmarks of fluent reading. The major purpose of the study was to learn how reading prosody is related to decoding and reading comprehension skills. Suprasegmental features of oral reading were measured in 2nd- and 3rd-grade children (N = 123) and 24 adults. Reading comprehension and word decoding skills were assessed. Children with faster decoding speed made shorter and less variable intersentential pauses, shorter intrasentential pauses, larger sentence-final fundamental frequency (F?) declinations, and better matched the adult prosodic F? profile. Two structural equation models found evidence of a relationship between decoding speed and reading prosody as well as decoding speed and comprehension. There was only minimal evidence that prosodic reading was an important mediator of reading comprehension skill. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Intensive Reading Remediation for Second and Third Graders and a 1-Year Follow-Up.

Second- and 3rd-grade children with poor word-level skills were randomly assigned to 8 months of explicit instruction emphasizing the phonologic and orthographic connections in words and text-based reading or to remedial reading programs provided by the schools. At posttest, treatment children showed significantly greater gains than control children in real word and nonword reading, reading rate, passage reading, and spelling, and largely maintained gains at a 1-year follow-up. Growth curve analyses indicated significant differences in growth rate during the treatment year, but not during the follow-up year. Results indicate that research-based practices can significantly improve reading and spelling outcomes for children in remedial programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conjoint Consultation Using Self-Administered Manual and Videotape Parent-Teacher Training: Effects on Children's Behavioral Difficulties.

This research involved comparing the effectiveness of two different approaches of conjoint consultation using a manual versus a videotape series as the main components of joint training parents and teachers to treat children's behavioral difficulties. Children exhibiting externalizing or internalizing behavioral problems who attended Head Start Programs were targeted for this intervention. During the first 2 years of the project, a manual-based program was conducted. The last 3 years of the project involved delivery of the parent-teacher training program through a series of videotapes and accompanying manuals. Children were randomly assigned to either an experimental or no treatment control group. The effectiveness of the intervention within the experimental group was assessed primarily through a pretest-posttest, experimental-control, group repeated-measures design. Direct behavioral observations did not indicate clinically relevant improvements in behavior; however, parents' and teachers' goal attainment reports characterized students as meeting their overall behavior goals. Parents and teachers also reported high rates of treatment acceptability and satisfaction with the manual and videotape treatment programs... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of Individual Differences in Reading: Results From Longitudinal Studies in English and Finnish.

The authors examined individual differences in reading development in English and Finnish. English-speaking Canadian children were assessed once per year in Grades 1-5, and Finnish children were assessed twice per year in Grades 1-2. Results from latent growth curve and simplex analyses showed that initial status was generally negatively associated with subsequent growth and that, although stable, individual differences were more likely to significantly decrease than to increase across the measurement points. Growth mixture models identified multiple groups of children whose reading development followed distinct patterns. The results indicate that it is possible for educational systems to significantly reduce individual differences in basic reading skills during early reading development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Reading research: Advances in theory and practice, volume 4.

Reviews the book, Reading research: Advances in theory and practice, volume 4 edited by G. E. MacKinnon and T. Gary Waller (1985). The stated purpose of this edited series on reading is "to provide an outlet for systematic and substantive reviews, both empirical and theoretical, and for extended integrative reports of programmatic research" (p. ix). The volume under review here consists of 262 pages and is comprised of six chapters that focus on a variety of reading skills and their implications for both theory and practice. Each chapter is accompanied by an informative outline, is very readable, and is well referenced. This fourth volume of Reading research: Advances in theory and practice remains true to the series editors' goals of providing substantive reviews and extended reports of programmatic research in reading. MacKinnon and Waller have edited a significant contribution to the knowledge base of reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)