Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming Predicting Early Development in Reading and Spelling: Results from a Cross-Linguistic Longitudinal Study

Precursors of Reading Difficulties in Czech and Slovak Children At-Risk of Dyslexia

Children with preschool language difficulties are at high risk of literacy problems; however, the nature of the relationship between delayed language development and dyslexia is not understood. Three hundred eight Slovak and Czech children were recruited into three groups: family risk of dyslexia, speech/language difficulties and controls, and were assessed three times from kindergarten until Grade 1. There was a twofold increase in probability of reading problems in each risk group. Precursors of 'dyslexia' included difficulties in oral language and code-related skills (phoneme awareness, letter-knowledge and rapid automatized naming); poor performance in phonological memory and vocabulary was observed in both affected and unaffected high-risk peers. A two-group latent variable path model shows that early language skills predict code-related skills, which in turn predict literacy skills. Findings suggest that dyslexia in Slavic languages has its origins in early language deficits, and children who succumb to reading problems show impaired code-related skills before the onset of formal reading instruction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Immediate and delayed effects of invented writing intervention in preschool

This study examined the effects of a 10 week invented writing program with five-year-old preschoolers (mean age 5.7 years) on their immediate post intervention literacy skills and also the facilitative effects of the intervention on the subsequent learning to read during the first 6 months of schooling. The study included 105 children (54 girls) from 12 preschools in Norway. The preschools were randomly assigned to the experimental group with the invented writing program, or the control group with the ordinary program offered to preschoolers. The classroom-based programs (40 sessions) were conducted by the children's regular teachers. The children's emergent literacy skills were evaluated using a pre-test, a post-test and a follow-up test 6 months later, and the data were analyzed using latent autoregressive models. The results showed that the invented writing group performed significantly better than the control group on the post-test for the measures of phoneme awareness (d = .54), spelling (d = .65) and word reading (d = .36). Additionally, indirect effects were observed on the delayed follow-up tests on phoneme awareness (d = .45), spelling (d = .48) and word reading (d = .26). In conclusion, we argue that invented writing appeared to smooth the progress of emergent literacy skills in preschool, including the subsequent reading development in school. Contextualized in a semi-consistent orthography and a preschool tradition that does not encourage the learning of written language skills, the findings add to our knowledge of how children learn to write and read.

Metaanalyse zur Wirksamkeit einer Förderung der phonologischen Bewusstheit in der deutschen Sprache

Zusammenfassung. Internationale Metaanalysen belegen bedeutsame Effekte einer Förderung der phonologischen Bewusstheit auf den Schriftspracherwerb. In der vorliegenden Metaanalyse mit 27 Primärstudien wurden die Effekte phonologischer Fördermaßnahmen auf die frühen schriftsprachlichen Kompetenzen im Deutschen quantifiziert. Die Analysen belegten generell höhere Effekte für Fördermaßnahmen, die vor der Einschulung stattfanden. Eine vorschulische Förderung besaß zwar keine signifikanten Effekte auf die Dekodierfähigkeit; jedoch konnten geringe Effekte auf die Rechtschreibkompetenz nachgewiesen werden, was auf die unterschiedliche Konsistenz der Graphem-Phonem- und Phonem-Graphem-Zuordnungen zurückzuführen sein könnte. Analysen zum Einfluss von Moderatoren ergaben, dass Kinder mit schwachen und guten Ausgangskompetenzen gleichermaßen von der Förderung profitieren, und dass die Kombination mit einem Buchstaben-Laut-Training keine inkrementellen Effekte im Vergleich zu rein phonologischen Fördermaßnahmen hat. Insgesamt fielen die metaanalytischen Trainingseffekte der deutschsprachigen Förderprogramme deutlich niedriger aus als in den internationalen Metaanalysen. Für diesen Befund werden sprachliche und methodische Erklärungen gegeben.

Phonological short-term memory and phonological awareness in students from the Elementary School

OBJECTIVES

To characterize and compare the performance of students at the beginning and at the end of the elementary school in Short-Term Phonological Memory (STPM) and Phonological Awareness (PA).

METHODS

We assessed 80 students of both the genders who showed adequate linguistic and academic performance. The sample comprised 40 students in 1st grade and 40 in 5th grade from a public state school with mean age of 6.2 and 9.8 years, respectively. The STPM was assessed using a standardized test of Pseudoword Repetition. PA was assessed through a Sequential Assessment Test (CONFIAS).

RESULTS

No difference was found between the students of 1st and 5th years in STPM both in total score and concerning the similarity of the pseudowords. Regarding PA, there was a significant difference among the percentage distribution of correct answers in syllabic and phonemic tasks, and the students from 5th grade presented better performance.

CONCLUSION

At the beginning and at the end of the elementary school, there is no difference in STPM performance. On the other hand, there is difference in PA, which highlights the influence of schooling on PA development. The correlation between STPM and PA only in 5th-year students suggests that, at the beginning of literacy, STPM cannot be considered as a predictor to children's performance in PA. Nevertheless, as the schooling advances, there is influence of PA on STPM.

Eficácia de um programa de intervenção fonológica em escolares de risco para a dislexia

RESUMO: Objetivo: verificar a eficácia de um programa de intervenção fonológica em escolares de risco para a dislexia. Métodos: participaram desse estudo 40 escolares do 1º ano do ensino fundamental, de ambos os gêneros, com idade entre 5 anos e 11 meses a 6 anos e 7 meses. Os escolares foram divididos em dois grupos: GI (20 escolares sem risco para dislexias) e GII (20 escolares com risco para dislexia), ambos os grupos foram submetidos ao programa de intervenção fonológica, composto por tarefas de identificação dos sons e das letras do alfabeto em sequência e em ordem aleatória, identificação e produção de rima, produção de rima com frases, identificação e manipulação de palavras, identificação e produção de sílabas, segmentação e análise silábica, identificação e segmentação fonêmica, substituição, síntese, análise e discriminação fonêmica. Em situação de pré e pós-testagem, todos os sujeitos desse estudo foram submetidos à aplicação do Protocolo de Avaliação das Habilidades Cognitivo-Liguísticas - versão coletiva e individual. Resultados: na comparação da pré com a pós-testagem do desempenho dos escolares de GI e GII, houve diferença estatística para os subtestes das habilidades de leitura, escrita, consciência fonológica, processamento auditivo e velocidade de processamento, indicando média de desempenho superior para GII na pós-testagem comparada a pré-testagem. Conclusão: o programa de intervenção fonológica foi eficaz para os escolares de risco para a dislexia, pois, possibilitou o desenvolvimento da consciência fonológica por meio do trabalho interventivo, auxiliando na aquisição das habilidades necessárias para o aprendizado da leitura e da escrita.

Cognitive Abilities Underlying Reading Accuracy, Fluency and Spelling Acquisition in Korean Hangul Learners from Grades 1 to 4: A Cross-Sectional Study

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine the cognitive abilities that predict reading and spelling performance in Korean children in Grades 1 to 4, depending on expertise and reading experience. As a result, visual cognition, phonological awareness, naming speed and receptive vocabulary significantly predicted reading accuracy in children in Grades 1 and 2, whereas visual cognition, phonological awareness and rapid naming speed did not predict reading accuracy in children in higher grades. For reading, fluency, phonological awareness, rapid naming speed and receptive vocabulary were crucial abilities in children in Grades 1 to 3, whereas phonological awareness was not a significant predictor in children in Grade 4. In spelling, reading ability and receptive vocabulary were the most important abilities for accurate Hangul spelling. The results suggested that the degree of cognitive abilities required for reading and spelling changed depending on expertise and reading experience.

Avaliação das habilidades preditoras do sucesso de leitura em crianças de 1º e 2º anos do ensino fundamental

OBJETIVO: estudar o desempenho de escolares de 1º e 2º anos do Ensino Fundamental (EF), em tarefas que avaliam habilidades e competências consideradas preditoras do sucesso do aprendizado da leitura e escrita. MÉTODOS: 73 crianças, entre seis e oito anos de idade, estudantes do 1º e 2º anos do EF de escola da rede pública de ensino da cidade de São Paulo, foram avaliadas por meio da aplicação do Instrumento de Avaliação da Leitura Inicial, composto por 20 tarefas envolvendo as habilidades e competências de linguagem oral, conhecimento sobre escrita, processamento fonológico, compreensão e leitura e escrita. RESULTADO: foi possível constatar que alguns escolares, tanto de 1º como de 2º ano, obtiveram desempenho inferior à média de seus grupos nas habilidades consideradas preditoras para o sucesso da leitura. Esse desempenho foi identificado a partir da porcentagem total de acertos obtida no Instrumento e a consequente classificação dos escolares em intervalos de percentis. Os grupos escolares diferenciaram-se apenas nas tarefas relacionadas às habilidades do processamento fonológico e nas competências de leitura e escrita, com melhor desempenho para os escolares do 2º ano, nas seguintes provas: (a) leitura de palavras; (b) leitura de pseudopalavras; (c) ditado de palavras; (d) ditado de pseudopalavras; (e) produção de rimas; (f) compreensão de leitura. CONCLUSÃO: a escolarização influenciou o desempenho em habilidades de processamento fonológico e competências de leitura e escrita. Habilidades de processamento fonológico e de conhecimento de escrita mostraram-se correlacionadas ao desempenho em codificação e decodificação, envolvidas na escrita e leitura de itens isolados.

Influência da escolaridade em habilidades linguístico-cognitivas

OBJETIVO: verificar a influência da escolaridade na Consciência Fonêmica e Nomeação Automática Rápida, além da possível correlação entre tais habilidades em escolares do 3º e 4º ano do Ensino Fundamental. MÉTODOS: participaram deste estudo 29 escolares do 3º ano (Grupo 1) e 28 escolares do 4º ano (Grupo 2) do Ensino Fundamental. Os sujeitos foram selecionados por meio de testes padronizados: um de fonologia (Linguagem Oral) e um de leitura, escrita e aritmética (Linguagem Escrita). Para a avaliação da Consciência Fonêmica foi aplicada a segunda parte da prova de Consciência Fonológica - Instrumento de Avaliação Sequencial. A avaliação da Nomeação Automática Rápida foi realizada por meio dos testes de Nomeação Rápida de números, cores, objetos e letras do "Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing" adaptado para o Português Brasileiro. RESULTADOS: os escolares do Grupo 1 apresentaram desempenho inferior em Consciência Fonêmica quando comparados ao Grupo 2, porém esta diferença não foi significante. A observação do desempenho entre os escolares do Grupo 1 e Grupo 2 em Nomeação Automática Rápida demonstrou que o padrão de tempo e de erros foi semelhante entre os grupos. Houve diferença apenas no tempo de nomeação e na ocorrência de erros na tarefa relacionada aos números. CONCLUSÃO: há influência da escolaridade, ainda que modestamente, em Consciência Fonêmica e Nomeação Automática Rápida, uma vez que escolares do Grupo 2 apresentaram melhores resultados do que Grupo 1, em ambos os testes, contudo sem diferença significante entre os grupos.

Wie effektiv sind Maßnahmen zur Förderung der phonologischen Bewusstheit?

Die phonologische Bewusstheit wird vielfach als notwendige Voraussetzung für den Schriftspracherwerb gesehen und stellt daher einen möglichen Ansatzpunkt für intervenierende Maßnahmen dar. Die Wirksamkeit von Trainingsprogrammen wurde jedoch bislang im deutschen Sprachraum nicht zusammenfassend geprüft. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde geprüft, ob ein Training phonologischer Bewusstheit für deutschsprachige Kinder effektiv ist, um deren Schriftspracherwerb zu fördern. Insgesamt wurden 19 Arbeiten, welche 22 Trainings-Kontrollgruppen-Vergleiche enthielten, durch eine systematische Literaturrecherche identifiziert und deren Ergebnisse meta-analytisch integriert. Für Maße der phonologischen Bewusstheit zeigte sich ein mittlerer, statistisch bedeutsamer Trainingseffekt in Höhe von d = 0.36. Ebenso waren im Mittel kurzfristige (d = 0.21) sowie langfristige (d = 0.14) signifikante Transfereffekte für das Lesen und Rechtschreiben nachweisbar. Im Vergleich zu Ergebnissen aus dem englischen Sprachraum zeigen die hier integrierten Befunde eine geringere Wirksamkeit von Fördermaßnahmen der phonologischen Bewusstheit für den Schriftspracherwerb im Deutschen. Systematische Orthographieunterschiede stellen einen Erklärungsansatz für diese divergierende Befundlage dar.

Spelling Processes of Children with Nonsyndromic Cleft Lip and/or Palate: A Preliminary Study

Objective

To compare the cognitive-linguistic processes underlying spelling performance of children with cleft lip and/or palate with those of typically developing children.

Design

An assessment battery including tests of hearing, articulation, verbal short-term and working memory, and phonological awareness, as well as word and nonword spelling, was administered to both groups.

Participants

A total of 15 children with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate were case-matched by age and sex to 15 typically developing children. The children were aged between 6 and 8 years and were bilingual, with English the dominant language.

Results

Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that the performance of children with cleft lip and/or palate was significantly poorer on phoneme deletion and nonword spelling ( P < .05) compared with typically developing children. Spearman correlation analyses revealed different relationships between the cognitive-linguistic and spelling measures for the cleft lip and/or palate and typically developing groups.

Conclusions

Children with cleft lip and/or palate underachieve in phonological awareness and spelling skills. To facilitate early intervention for literacy problems, speech-language pathologists should routinely assess the cognitive-linguistic processing of children with cleft lip and/or palate, especially phonological awareness, as part of their case management protocols.

Phonemic awareness is a more important predictor of orthographic processing than rapid serial naming: Evidence from Russian

We studied the relationship between rapid serial naming (RSN) and orthographic processing in Russian, an asymmetrically transparent orthography. Ninety-six students (mean age = 13.73) completed tests of word and pseudoword reading fluency, spelling, orthographic choice, phonological choice, PA and RSN. PA was a better predictor of orthographic skills and pseudoword reading accuracy than RSN, which accounted for more variance in word and pseudoword reading fluency. Controlling for pseudoword reading fluency washed out RSN's contribution to word reading fluency. These results extend previous findings questioning the role of RSN as an index of orthographic processing skills and support the idea that RSN taps into automaticity/efficiency of processing print-sound mappings.

Rapid naming, reading and comprehension in students with learning difficulties

PURPOSE

To compare and correlate the performance of students with learning difficulties in rapid naming, reading and comprehension.

METHODS

Participants were 32 students from 4th grade of elementary school of both genders, with ages between 11 years and 4 months and 12 years and 7 months. The first and second oral reading of a text selected based on the indication of 4th grade teachers were conducted, as well as the first and second reading comprehension task composed by four questions presented right after the reading, to which students should answered orally, and the rapid naming task from the Test of Cognitive-Linguistic Performance, individual version.

RESULTS

Differences were found between the first and the second comprehension scores, and between rapid naming, first and second reading. There was a strong correlation between comprehension and reading, suggesting that the performance in the first reading significantly influenced the performance in the second reading, which also occurred for comprehension.

CONCLUSION

The delay in the activities of naming, reading and comprehension in the first evaluation provoked failures in the phoneme-grapheme conversion that may be enough to cause learning difficulties in reading.

Investigation of cognitive abilities related to reading and spelling in Korean: readers with high, average, and low skill levels

In this study, we investigated the characteristics of cognitive abilities as predictors of Korean reading and spelling ability, and the characteristics of the cognition of reading difficulty in Korean. In 103 Korean third-grade children, we tested ability to read and spell, nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary size, phonological cognitive processing, visual cognitive processing, and naming speed. Our results indicated that receptive vocabulary, phoneme awareness, and naming speed served as factors for predicting reading test score; receptive vocabulary served as a factor for predicting spelling test score. We found that low reading-level groups had significantly slower performance on the naming speed task and lower scores on the receptive vocabulary test, as compared with the other groups (average and high reading-level groups). The present results have implications concerning useful tasks for screening for Korean poor readers.

Phonemic awareness in students before and after language workshops

PURPOSE

To verify the phonemic awareness performance of students before and after language workshops.

METHODS

Phonemic awareness abilities of 49 students in the fourth year of Elementary School were assessed using the second part of the test "Phonological Awareness - Sequential Assessment Instrument" (CONFIAS). The exclusion criteria in the study were: presence of complaints or indicators of hearing and/or vision deficits; presence of neurological, behavioral and/or cognitive impairments. Subjects included in the study participated in both initial and final assessments and in at least 75% of the workshop meetings. According to their performance on the test, children were divided into three groups: initial, intermediate and advanced. Each group attended separate weekly workshops for stimulation of phonological and phonemic abilities. After five language workshops the students were reassessed.

RESULTS

The phonemic awareness performance of students in all groups significantly improved after the workshops. The intermediate group presented the greater improvement in the mean number of correct answers.

CONCLUSION

The phonemic awareness performance of students improves after language workshops.