It is well established that emergent literacy is a strong predictor of later reading difficulties, and that the "home literacy environment" plays an important role in the development of children's preschool emergent literacy and oral language. Furthermore, reading difficulties runs in families and children with a family risk of reading…

We examined the development of children's positive and negative attitudes toward other-gender peers over 1 year, and explored the longitudinal social consequences of holding positive or negative attitudes on the beholder of these attitudes. Participants were 206 second graders (Mage = 7.18 yrs, SD = .56, 50% girls) and 206 fourth graders…

It has been common knowledge for decades that poor and working-class students tend to experience "summer learning loss," a drop in performance between spring and fall that serves to widen the gap between students. However, new research shows that the reality of summer learning loss is more complex. Megan Kuhfeld draws on data from the…

The concept of "Home Learning Environment" (HLE) covers activities in a family providing intellectual stimulation for a child, such as reading to him or her or visiting libraries. Numerous studies have shown an association between HLE and children's cognitive development. In this longitudinal study, we focus on HLE as a predictor for…

Often, the classification of words does not go beyond "difficult" (i.e., infrequent, late-learned, nonimageable, etc.) or "easy" (i.e., frequent, early-learned, imageable, etc.) words. In the present study, we used a latent cluster analysis to divide 703 Dutch words with scores for eight word properties into seven clusters of words. Each cluster…

The associations between vocabulary growth and reading development were examined longitudinally for a representative sample of Dutch children throughout the elementary school period. Data on basic and advanced vocabulary, word decoding, and reading comprehension were collected across the different grades. The results showed significant progress on…

We examined the double deficit hypothesis (Wolf & Bowers, 1999) and literacy development in a longitudinal dataset of 1,006 Finnish children who were nonreaders at school entry. A single phonological awareness (PA) deficit was a predictor of pseudoword spelling accuracy and reading fluency, and a single rapid automatized naming (RAN) deficit…

Four hundred and ninety-five Japanese primary-school children aged from 8 (Grade-2) to 12 (Grade-6) were tested for their abilities to read/write in Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji, for their size of vocabulary and for other cognitive abilities including arithmetic, visuo-spatial and phonological processing. Percentages of the children whose…

In developing countries, the role of the home environment in children's development of literacy skills is largely unknown. This study examines the relationship in a sample of 75 grade two children from rural eastern Tanzania. It also discusses the role of house building material and domestic facilities, in addition to parents' education and…

The low achievement of students from non-English-speaking households living in low socioeconomic contexts is associated with academic skill gaps evident at kindergarten entry. Yet, few cost-effective, valid instruments are available to assess these students' school readiness. To examine this topic, this longitudinal study followed 1,069 primarily…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate rapid automatized naming skills (RAN) and immediate memory processes in 243 Chinese Mandarin-speaking elementary readers (ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 5). For RAN subtests, the mean naming time decreased monotonically with grade level in good and average readers, and a similar trajectory was found in poor…

This study examined the preschool predictors of elementary school narrative writing skills. The sample included 65 typically developing African American children, ranging in age from 5.0 to 5.5 years, and was 44.6% male. Targeted preschool predictors included measures of phonological processing, core language abilities, prereading skills, and…

The objective of this study was to investigate the contribution of rapid digit naming, phonological memory, letter sound naming, and orthographic knowledge to the prediction of responsiveness to a school-based, individual intervention of word reading fluency problems of 122 Dutch second and third graders whose reading scores were below the 10th…

This study investigates the extent to which the quality of the relationships between African American children and their mothers and teachers in kindergarten predict academic and social development during elementary school years using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. The…

The Number Sets Test was developed to assess the speed and accuracy with which children can identify and process quantities represented by Arabic numerals and object sets. The utility of this test for predicting mathematics achievement and risk for mathematical learning disability (MLD) was assessed for a sample of 223 children. A signal detection…