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 =…

RAN (Rapid Automatized Naming) is known to be a robust predictor of reading development in different languages. Much less is known about RAN predictive power in bilingual contexts. This is the first meta-analysis of research with bilingual children, assessing the strength of the RAN-reading relationship both within and across languages. It also…

We examined the cognitive, language, and instructional predictors of early word-reading ability in a sample of children with Williams syndrome longitudinally. At Time 1, sixty-nine 6-7-year-olds (mean age = 6.53 years) completed standardized measures of phonological awareness, visual-spatial perception, vocabulary, and overall intellectual…

We studied the compositional written skills and spelling competence of individuals with a severe hearing impairment, examining qualitative and quantitative characteristics of their texts, the psycholinguistic variables modulating their productions, and writing errors following a fine-grained analysis. Sixteen deaf young adults, educated in…

The goal of the present study was to test theories about the extent to which individual differences in word reading align with those in spelling and the extent to which other cognitive and linguistic skills play different roles in word reading and spelling. Using data from 1,116 children ranging from 8 to 17 years, we modeled word reading and…

This meta-analysis aimed to systematically investigate the cognitive and linguistic correlates of both word decoding and reading comprehension among children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) across orthographies. Based on data from 26 studies of 1.92- to 18.92-year-old children with ASD, we found that (1) intelligence, theory of mind, and…

The main aim of this study was to evaluate the Early Grade Writing Assessment for Kindergarten (EGWA-K), which is grounded in foundational literacy skills, for its validity and diagnostic accuracy in identifying children at risk of developing early learning disabilities in writing (LDW). To the best of our knowledge, no such tool exists for…

Preschool children often confuse letters with their mirror images when they try to read and write. Mirror confusion seems to occur more often in line with the direction of script (e.g., left-to-right for the Latin alphabetic script), suggesting that the processing of letter orientation and text directionality may be interrelated in preliterate…

Repeated reading (RR) is often recommended for promoting reading fluency, but it is unclear whether continuous texts or word lists should be used. This study tested whether the effects of RR depend on the reading material and whether these effects interact with students' prior abilities. N = 304 primary school students were randomly assigned to…

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have consistently showed poor performances in reading comprehension. Extending from previous studies that presented pure-text, this study aims to test the performances of graphic novel reading. We tested 24 Chinese children who have been diagnosed as DLD and 24 typical readers matched with age…

The goal of this study was to examine the cross-lagged relations between vocabulary and word reading in children learning two scripts at the same time (pinyin and Chinese). One hundred fifty-nine third-year kindergarten Chinese children (70 girls and 89 boys; mean age = 72.70 months) were assessed on measures of nonverbal IQ, phonological…

This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of verbal and visuospatial memory in Chinese reading comprehension. One hundred twenty-eight Cantonese-speaking children participated in the study at the end of their 3rd year of kindergarten in Hong Kong. Both verbal and visuospatial memory were found to be significantly associated with…

We examined the cognitive, language, and instructional factors associated with reading ability in Williams syndrome (WS). Seventy 9-year-olds with WS completed standardized measures of real-word reading, pseudoword decoding, reading comprehension, phonological skills, listening comprehension, nonverbal reasoning, visual-spatial ability, verbal…

A contemporary question is whether the script we read in affects our cognition, termed the script relativity hypothesis (Pae in: Script effects as the hidden drive of the mind, cognition, and culture, Springer, Berlin, 2020). The aim of this review is to examine variation in spatial layout (interword spaces and linear-nonlinear configuration) and…

To ensure adequate writing support for children, a profound understanding of the subskills of text quality is essential. Writing theories have already helped to better understand the contribution of different subskills to text quality, but empirical work is often limited to more general low-level transcription skills like handwriting fluency and…