This study examined the influence of phonological memory and rapid naming on the development of letter knowledge. Participants were 77 Dutch children, who were followed from the start of their first kindergarten year (mean age 4 years 6.8 months) to the end of their second kindergarten year. Phonological memory was assessed by a nonword repetition…

Compared predictive value of kindergarten phonological awareness tasks and letter knowledge on 134 German first and second graders' literacy performance. Found that phonological awareness tasks varied in prediction of later literacy but were better predictors than letter knowledge. Kindergarten letter knowledge also reliably predicted later…

Examined the relationship between phonological sensitivity and letter knowledge in 4- and 5-year-olds in a one-year longitudinal study. Found that phonological sensitivity predicted letter knowledge growth, and letter knowledge predicted phonological sensitivity growth, when controlling for age and oral language abilities. Also found that the…

Examined phonological skills of children during their first two years of learning to read. Found that segmentation was strongly correlated with reading and spelling attainment at the end of the first year of school; letter-name knowledge predicted reading and spelling skill and interacted with segmentation skills. Rhyming predicted spelling skills…

Two studies investigated the importance of phoneme awareness relative to other predictors in the development of reading and spelling among children learning a consistent orthography (Czech) and an inconsistent orthography (English). In Study 1, structural equation models revealed that Czech (n=107) and English (n=71) data were fitted well by the…