Theory of Mind (ToM) is a skill of social cognition recently of interest to literacy researchers. This article presents initial findings from a pilot study investigating the use of ToM to teach theme identification and theme statement formation to beginning readers who are less-skilled in comprehension. The authors designed a brief, 1:1 listening…

Theories of reading comprehension have widely predicted a role for syntactic skills, or the ability to understand and manipulate the structure of a sentence. Yet, these theories are based primarily on English, leaving open the question of whether this remains true across typologically different languages such as English versus Chinese. There are…

Research has established that reading and writing skills are closely linked for most individuals, which can be explained by the shared knowledge and functional relations theoretical perspectives. The current study used quantile regression to explore differences between and within Grades 3-5 in the United States in the associations between a…

Purpose: This study investigated how correlations between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading depend on characteristics of the stimuli. RAN tasks using stimuli with high phonological demands were predicted to be the strongest correlates of decoding efficiency, while high semantic demands were predicted to lead to stronger correlations with…

This study aims to understand individual differences between children in metacognitive monitoring and control processes and the developmental trajectories of metacognition over one year. Three indicators of procedural metacognition were used: monitoring accuracy (discrimination of confidence judgments between correct and incorrect test responses),…

This study investigated the relationship between the level of cognitive-linguistic difficulty of task input and the size of the cross-linguistic relationship for academic listening comprehension in emergent bilinguals. It was theoretically motivated by task-dependent cross-linguistic interaction frameworks. We hypothesized that task item sets that…

To investigate the longitudinal effects of two domain-general cognitive abilities, namely verbal working memory and visual search skill, on Chinese reading comprehension. To evaluate whether decoding and linguistic comprehension mediate such effects. A total of 202 first-grade Chinese-speaking children from mainland China (M[subscript]age =…

Many studies have been conducted on the development of young children; however, not many have explored the cognitive processes of prereaders. The eye-tracker has been used with success to investigate the cognitive processes of young children abroad, but such studies are lacking in Malaysia. This study used an experimental procedure created with…

Substantial research among bilingual adults indicates that exposure to words primes other semantically related words within and across languages, as well as the direct translation equivalents [e.g. Chen and Ng 1989. "Semantic Facilitation and Translation Priming Effects in Chinese-English Bilinguals." "Memory & Cognition"…

We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate reading-writing relations. Beyond the overall relation, we systematically investigated moderation of the relation as a function of linguistic grain size (word reading and spelling versus reading comprehension and written composition), measurement of reading comprehension (e.g., multiple choice,…

Reading self-beliefs, comprising self-concept and self-efficacy, play a pivotal role in shaping students' learning engagement and learning outcomes. However, existing literature on the self-beliefs of school-entry students primarily originates from Western contexts, and the exploration of differences in self-beliefs, engagement in learning, and…

We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate reading-writing relations. Beyond the overall relation, we systematically investigated moderation of the relation as a function of linguistic grain size (word reading and spelling versus reading comprehension and written composition), measurement of reading comprehension (e.g., multiple choice,…

The present five-year longitudinal study from preschool to grade 3 examined the developmental associations among oral language comprehension, task orientation, reading precursors, and reading fluency, as well as their role in predicting grade 3 reading comprehension. Ninety Finnish-speaking students participated in the study. The students' oral…

The present study aimed to examine the role of phonological--semantic flexibility (PSF) in learning to read Chinese. PSF refers to a specific flexibility applied to process the dual linguistic dimensions of words (i.e., sound and meaning). A correlational study (Study 1) was conducted to determine the unique contribution of PSF to three aspects of…

Researchers are increasingly interested in working memory (WM) training. However, it is unclear whether it strengthens comprehension in young children who are at risk for learning difficulties. We conducted a modest study of whether the training of verbal WM would improve verbal WM and passage listening comprehension and whether training effects…