Jan Carol Näslund

The impact of early metalinguistic competencies and memory capacity on reading and spelling in elementary school: Results of the Munich Longitudinal Study on the Genesis of Individual Competencies (LOGIC).

This paper reports on a longitudinal study dealing with the development of literacy in young children. A total of 163 children were first tested during their last year in kindergarten using a variety of tasks that tapped phonological processing, memory capacity, early literacy, and intelligence. Children’s word decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling skills were assessed in elementary school several years later. As a main result, all of the predictor domains had a significant impact on the acquisition of literacy in elementary school, although the contribution of each domain differed as a function of the criterion measure. An attempt to identify children-at-risk using a kindergarten screening test provided encouraging results. Nonetheless, it was shown that whereas group predictions of reading and spelling performance can be quite accurate, the individual prognosis of school problems is far from perfect.

Longitudinal effects of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness on reading performance

This study addresses the longitudinal relationship among verbal ability, memory capacity, phonological awareness, and reading performance. Data from 92 German children were used to explore the exact relation among these variables. Indicators of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness were assessed in kindergarten and again after the first grade. The interrelationships among these factors, and the subsequent influence they have on decoding speed and reading comprehension during the second grade were examined via structural equation modeling procedures. Overall, the results of the longitudinal analyses show that the relationship of memory capacity and phonological awareness remains stable over time, and that memory capacity predicts performance on phonological awareness tasks in both kindergarten and second grade. Phonological awareness proved to be a significant predictor of decoding speed, which in turn considerably influenced reading comprehension.

Phonemic and Graphemic Consistency: Effects on Decoding for German and American Children.

Speed, accuracy, and types of errors in decoding lists of words and pseudo words and performance in two phonemic awareness tasks were assessed for German and American children in the first and second grades. German children were significantly better than American children only in pseudo word decoding measures across grades. Between group analyses showed that American children committed more vowel and word substitution errors in both decoding accuracy tasks than German children. Word substitution errors were more likely in word decoding than in pseudo word decoding for children in both languages. Within group analyses indicate that variance in decoding errors and speed accounted for by word substitution versus nonword and vowel versus consonant errors differed dependent on grade and whether real or pseudo words were read. Results suggest successful reading in English depends upon more complex grapheme to phoneme correspondence rules than does reading in German.

THE EARLY PREDICTION OF READING AND SPELLING: EVIDENCE FROM THE MUNICH LONGITUDINAL STUDY ON THE GENESIS OF INDIVIDUAL COMPETENCIES

In this chapter, we present findings from the Munich Longitudinal Study on the Genesis of Individual Competencies (LOGIC) concerning the early prediction of reading and spelling in school. About 210 children participated in the study. The various predictor variables were assessed during the last year of kindergarten and represented four different domains (i e, IQ, phonological awareness, memory capacity, and early literacy). The criterion measures were assessed from Grade two on and tapped various aspects of reading (i.e., decoding speed and reading comprehension) and spelling. As a main result, the data indicate that all four predictor domains had a significant impact on the acquisition of reading and spelling skills in school. However, the relative contribution of the domains varied as a function of the criterion under study and the measurement point considered. Although the data confirmed the importance of phonological awareness in the process of learning to read and to spell, they also highlight the relevance of early letter knowledge for subsequent literacy. Contrary to expectations, sex differences and individual differences in quality of instruction did not have a major impact on results. Taken together, our findings confirm the results of major Anglo-American and Scandinavian studies, indicating that the importance of predictor domains such as phonological awareness, memory capacity, and early literacy generalizes across several languages.

Automaticity and Phonemic Representations: Perceptual and Cognitive Building Blocks for Reading.

Since the popularization of the theory of automaticity as it pertains to reading (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974), 20 years of interdisciplinary theory building and research has led to increasingly specific descriptions of the automatic reading process. Developments in cognitive theories of skill automatization, and advances in psycholinguistics and neuropsychological research in language processes, have led to a more modular view of the specific linguistic functioning that affects the development of literacy. Current consensus and controversies about automatic processing in reading reflect researchers’ efforts to locate perceptual and cognitive functions that are most important to the efficiency of text decoding. This article describes the search that has led many researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology to the study of the smallest perceptual component of speech — the phoneme. The speed, accuracy, and strength of phonemic representations in decoding text is now ...

Beginning Reading in Germany and the U.S.: A Comparison of Phonological Segmentation, Decoding, Lexical Access, and Comprehension

First and second grade German and American children were compared on three phonological awareness tasks, lexical access speed, decoding of words and pseudowords, and reading comprehension in order to assess the relationship of linguistic and reading (decoding and comprehension) measures in both language groups. No significant differences were found between Gelman and American children in either grade in pseudoword decoding accuracy, word decoding speed, and the phoneme take-away task. Ward decoding accuracy was similar for first grade children, but second grade American children were significantly more accurate than children in the German second grade. German children in both first and second grade were significantly more accurate in phoneme manipulation tasks and faster at decoding pseudowords. The patterns of errors in the phoneme take-away task were similar between language groups. Pseudoword decoding performance indicated that American children made more errors in decoding vowels than did German children in both grades. Phonemic tasks were significantly related to reading measures for both German and American children. The latter group showed a greater relationship between reading measures and lexical access speed than did German children. Differences in orthography and lessened vowel consistency in English may give rise to differences in phonemic representations of vowels and an increased reliance on lexical access cues in reading for the American children. This might explain why German children do not differ as much as American children in their speed of word decoding as compared with decoding pseudowords.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN READING: THE CASE FOR LEXICAL ACCESS

Lexical access is the process of getting information about a word, such as its meaning(s) and its pronunciation, from ones mental dictionary. Some students’ reading comprehension is hindered because their lexical access is slow and nonautomatic. Research on lexical access is reviewed, and the implications for comprehension development are discussed.

Predicting Reading Acquisition in High and Low IQ Groups

A developmental study completed in Germany provided the data to compare groups of children varying in second grade reading performance and IQ on language related skills in kindergarten and in second grade. This population is suited for such a developmental study, given the lack of preschool literacy knowledge in comparison to other populations. Children were first tested in phonological awareness, verbal memory, and verbal ability at age 6, before formal literacy training, and once again in second grade, when reading performance and IQ were tested. Multivariate analyses indicated interaction effects for reading performance and IQ for the memory span tests (two time points) and for the verbal ability tests (at both time points). Reading performance for children in the lower IQ range varied with verbal ability and verbal memory. Children in the higher IQ range did not differ in these two measures in relation to reading performance. The phonological awareness measures (at both time points) indicated a main effect for reading performance, but not for IQ, and no significant interaction. Phonological awareness varied with reading performance in both IQ groups. This study suggests the robustness of phonological awareness in its long term and concurrent relationship to reading performance over a wider range of general IQ levels, in comparison to other variables believed to significantly influence reading. It also suggests that there may be divergence in the importance of certain predictor and covariate factors in emergent reading among different populations of children.