Cognitive and environmental predictors of early literacy skills

Mother-child and father-child "serve and return" interactions at 9 months: Associations with children's language skills at 18 and 24 months

Infants learn language through the back-and-forth interactions with their parents where they "serve" by uttering sounds, gesturing, or looking and parents "return" in prompt (i.e., close in time) and meaningful (i.e., semantically relevant to the object of interest) ways. In a sample of 9-month-old infants (n = 148) and their mothers and fathers (n = 296 parents) from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds, we examined the associations between "serve and return" (SR) parent-child interactions and children's language skills at 18 and 24 months. We also examined the moderation effects between maternal and paternal SR interactions on language outcomes. SR interactions were transcribed and coded from videotaped parent-child toy play activities during home visits. We report three findings. First, mothers who provided more meaningful responses to their child's serves at 9 months had children with higher expressive language scores at 18 months. Second, fathers' prompt responses (i.e., within 3 s) at 9 months were associated with higher receptive language scores at 18 months, but their meaningful responses were negatively associated with receptive language scores at 24 months. Third, the negative association between fathers' meaningful responses and children's receptive language scores was reduced (compensated) when mothers' meaningful responses were high. Findings show that infants in ethnically and socioeconomically diverse families engage in frequent SR interactions with both mothers and fathers, who make unique contributions to infants' language development. We discuss implications for programs and policies that aim to promote early language development and reduce gaps in school readiness.

Does the frequency of reading and writing habits contribute to executive functions, intelligence, and learning in adolescents with healthy development?

The influence of the frequency of reading and writing habits (FRWH) on cognition has been investigated by several studies in the literature. However, the implications of FRWH on executive development, intelligence, and academic achievement are not yet clear in adolescents with healthy development. The aim was to verify whether there are differences in executive functions, intelligence, and academic achievement between adolescents with high and low FRWH. Moreover, we aimed to investigate if there are differences in the parental FRWH between adolescents with high and low FRWH. The sample was composed of 47 healthy adolescents, n = 24 with high FRWH and n = 23 with low FRWH. Adolescents with higher FRWH had better performance on measures of vocabulary, Speech Act analysis, and Oral Narrative Discourse. Therefore, a high FRWH has a positive influence on the cognitive development of healthy adolescents, especially with regard to pragmatic language. However, adolescents with low FRWH performed better than those with a high FRWH on an automatic counting task. The interpretation of cognitive performance and academic achievement scores in neuropsychological assessment should consider the FRWH of parents and adolescents. This factor should be targeted by early stimulation interventions to help adolescents achieve the highest possible levels of global development.

Executive functions in Chinese kindergarten children with early reading problems

Learning to read Chinese is a complex task that draws on a range of executive function (EF) skills since early development. However, no studies have examined EF as a potential contributing factor to early reading problems among Chinese children. The present longitudinal study identified 48 poor readers and 48 normal readers among a sample of 190 Chinese children at the end of kindergarten. Measures of EF skills (working memory, inhibition control, and cognitive flexibility) and reading outcomes (word reading, sentence reading fluency, and sentence reading comprehension) were administered to the children. The two groups were retrospectively compared on the EF measures after age and nonverbal IQ were considered. Poor readers were found to perform significantly worse than normal readers in all the examined EF skills. Correlation and regression results revealed a relatively different nature of the relationship between EF and reading in poor readers as compared with normal readers. Inhibition control predicted reading outcomes in poor readers only, while cognitive flexibility predicted reading outcomes in normal readers only. Working memory was significantly correlated to word reading in poor readers and to reading comprehension in normal readers. The results are discussed in terms of the special characteristics of the Chinese language.

Entering Into the Story: Implications for Emergent Literacy

In this article we explore the ways in which three young children from a non-mainstream cultural group created stories with the assistance of their caregivers and siblings in the social contexts of their homes. We assert that these children's oral narrations show us important dimensions of early experience with decontextualized content as practiced in their families that may offer suggestions for analysis of culturally sensitive experiences with literacy for all children. The dimensions we highlight are the tangibility of the elements around which the story is created, the interlocutor support children receive for beginning and continuing their stories, and the interaction between the storytelling process and the child's self-interest. These three dimensions illustrate how children "enter" into stories and storytelling and broaden our understanding for fostering culturally sustaining pedagogy within schools.

Parental Teaching of Reading and Spelling Across the Transition From Kindergarten to Grade 1

We investigated the longitudinal links between parental teaching of reading and spelling and children’s word reading and spelling skills. Data of 244 Lithuanian parent–child dyads were analyzed, who were followed across three time points: end of kindergarten (T1; M_age = 6.88; 116 girls), beginning of Grade 1 (T2), and end of Grade 1 (T3). The children’s word reading and spelling skills were tested, and the parents answered questionnaires on the frequency with which they taught their children reading and spelling. Overall, the results showed that the parents were responsive to their children’s skill levels across the domains of reading and spelling and across time (i.e., the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1 and across Grade 1). However, differences between the domains of reading and spelling were also observed. In particular, in the domain of reading and across the transition from kindergarten to Grade 1, the parents responded to their children’s skill levels by increasing the time spent teaching children with poor word reading skills, and decreasing the teaching time for the children with good word reading skills. In contrast, as spelling skills may require more time to develop, parents maintained similar frequencies of teaching spelling across the transition to Grade 1 for all children, and only parents of good spellers taught less spelling at the end of Grade 1 than parents of children with poor and average word spelling skills.

Features of Known and Unknown Words for First Graders of Different Proficiency Levels in Winter and Spring

This study describes the features of words known and unknown by first graders of different proficiency levels in six instances of an oral reading fluency assessment: three in winter and three in spring. A sample of 411 students was placed into four groups (very high, high, middle, and low) based on their median correct words per minute in spring. Each word in the assessment was coded on 11 features: numbers of phonemes, letters, syllables, blends, morphemes, percentages of multisyllabic and of morphologically complex words, concreteness, age of acquisition, decodability, and U function. Words were classified as known if more than 50% of the students within a group were able to correctly read those words. Features of known and unknown words were contrasted for all but the highest group, which made no errors, at each point in time. An analysis of the patterns of known words across groups from winter to spring shows that students followed a similar general progression in the number and type of words recognized. The most prominent feature of unknown words in winter and spring for the middle group of students was the presence of multiple syllables. The lowest-performing group of students continued to be limited by word length and frequency in their recognition of words, but on both features, their proficiency increased from winter to spring. The discussion addresses several critical issues, most notably the relationship of words in oral reading assessments to the word recognition curriculum of many beginning reading programs.

Shared Storybook Reading and Oral Language Development: A Bioecological Perspective

Shared reading research has become increasingly multidisciplinary and has incorporated a multitude of assessment methods. This calls for an interdisciplinary perspective on children's shared reading experiences at home and at the child care center and their relationships to oral language development. Here, we first discuss Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model of human development (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006) regarding the relationship between shared storybook reading and oral language development. Second, we develop a framework for investigating effects of shared reading on language development in two important microsystems: the home literacy environment (HLE) and the child care literacy environment (CCLE). Zooming in on shared storybook reading as a proximal process that drives oral language development, we then develop a triad model of language learning through shared storybook reading that integrates approaches and evidence from educational psychology, developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, and corpus linguistics. Our model describes characteristics of children, adults, and books, and how their interplay influences shared reading activities. Third, we discuss implications for the Home Literacy Model (Sénéchal and LeFevre, 2002, 2014) regarding the conceptualization of shared reading as an important source of oral language development. Finally, to facilitate integrated research designs that include the two most important microsystems, we provide a critical discussion of assessment methods used in research that investigates the HLE and the CCLE and relate them to the shared reading triad in our bioecological model of shared storybook reading. We conclude with directions for future research.

Relationships Among Home Literacy Behaviors, Materials, Socioeconomic Status, and Early Literacy Outcomes Across 14 Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Most research on reading acquisition is conducted in high-income countries, and the majority of the limited research from middle- and low-income countries focuses exclusively on school settings. We therefore know little about how home literacy environments (HLEs) relate to early reading skill acquisition in low-resource settings. This study uses baseline data from 18 Save the Children (SC) project sites across 14 countries in Central America, Asia, and Africa to address several questions. First, we examine the structure of HLE in the data set, with a particular focus on its relationship to socioeconomic status (SES). Second, we extend our measurement model to examine the relationship between HLE and early literacy skills across the sample of more than 14,000 first- and second-grade boys and girls (mean age: 8.4 years) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We conclude that SES, home reading behaviors, and home reading materials are separate, though related constructs, and that materials in the home are a moderately strong predictor of early reading in these contexts. Our findings indicate that studies investigating literacy environments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) should clearly and distinctly conceptualize SES, literacy behaviors, and literacy materials. In addition, the robustness of the relationships between the presence of reading materials in the home and children’s early literacy skills suggests that increasing access to these materials may enhance skill development in low-resource contexts.

Der Titelrekognitionstest für das Vorschulalter (TRT-VS)

Zusammenfassung. Studien haben gezeigt, dass bereits im Vorschulalter ein positiver Zusammenhang zwischen Lesevolumen und Sprachentwicklung besteht. Eine objektive und ökonomische Methode zur Erfassung des Lesevolumens sind Titelrekognitionstests. Hierbei geben die Teilnehmenden für eine Reihe von Buchtiteln an, ob ihnen diese bekannt sind. Um Ratetendenzen zu minimieren, enthält der Test auch fiktive Buchtitel. Wir beschreiben die Entwicklung des Titelrekognitionstests für das Vorschulalter (TRT-VS) und stellen anhand von 2 Validierungsstudien seine psychometrischen Eigenschaften vor. In Studie 1 untersuchen wir seine Reliabilität sowie Personen- und Itemkennwerte in einer Stichprobe von Kindern und jungen Erwachsenen. Studie 2 analysiert den Zusammenhang zwischen TRT-VS, häuslicher Lernumgebung und Vorläuferfertigkeiten des Lesens in einer Stichprobe von Vorschulkindern und deren Eltern. Die Studien belegen, dass der TRT-VS ein reliables Instrument zur Messung früher Leseerfahrungen ist und eine hohe Konstruktvalidität aufweist.

Story time turbocharger? Child engagement during shared reading and cerebellar activation and connectivity in preschool-age children listening to stories

Expanding behavioral and neurobiological evidence affirms benefits of shared (especially parent-child) reading on cognitive development during early childhood. However, the majority of this evidence involves factors under caregiver control, the influence of those intrinsic to the child, such as interest or engagement in reading, largely indirect or unclear. The cerebellum is increasingly recognized as playing a "smoothing" role in higher-level cognitive processing and learning, via feedback loops with language, limbic and association cortices. We utilized functional MRI to explore the relationship between child engagement during a mother-child reading observation and neural activation and connectivity during a story listening task, in a sample of 4-year old girls. Children exhibiting greater interest and engagement in the narrative showed increased activation in right-sided cerebellar association areas during the task, and greater functional connectivity between this activation cluster and language and executive function areas. Our findings suggest a potential cerebellar "boost" mechanism responsive to child engagement level that may contribute to emergent literacy development during early childhood, and synergy between caregiver and child factors during story sharing.

Percepções de pais/responsáveis de crianças com desvio fonológico acerca do desvio fonológico e da terapia fonoaudiológica

RESUMO: Objetivo: investigar a percepção de pais/responsáveis de crianças com desvio fonológico em relação ao próprio desvio e terapia fonoaudiológica aplicada. Métodos: a amostra foi composta por 23 pais/responsáveis de crianças com diagnóstico de desvio fonológico, atendidas em um ambulatório de Fonoaudiologia. Para a análise das entrevistas coletadas utilizou-se a Análise de Conteúdo. Resultados: em síntese, merecem atenção: (a) a aceitabilidade ao atendimento fonoaudiológico, inclusive, em muitos sendo de própria iniciativa dos pais/responsáveis a procura pela fonoterapia; (b) esses referem perceber a dificuldade linguística de seus filhos, bem como, as evoluções na sua fala; (c) enumeram, com maior ocorrência, os problemas escolares e o bullying como dificuldades relacionadas ao desvio fonológicoe, também, como sua preocupação decorrente do mesmo; (d) sugerem mais frequentemente a busca pelo atendimento fonoaudiológico a outros pais; (e) dizem contribuir no ambiente familiar para com a terapia fonoaudiológica e; (f) mesmo não tão frequente, alguns mencionam ter dúvida quanto ao tempo de terapia. Conclusão: desse modo, os pais/responsáveis expuseram suas concepções acerca de sua experiência relacionada à dificuldade de fala e à terapia fonoaudiológica. Acredita-se em uma contribuição para a reflexão dos procedimentos terapêuticos adotados na fonoterapia, bem como, para o amadurecimento da relação terapeuta-paciente e terapeuta-pais. Por esse motivo, incentiva-se a inclusão e aproximação dos cuidadores na terapia, com o intuito de ampliar a adesão e contribuição desses para a superação da dificuldade de fala.