This study examined the direct and indirect relations of foundational language skills (vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, and orthographic knowledge), higher-order cognitive skills (inference making and comprehension monitoring), and word reading to reading comprehension in Chinese. Consistent with the hierarchical relations specified in the Direct…

The present study aimed to examine the contributions of two separate Pinyin skills and oral vocabulary to Chinese word reading of 70 third graders in a U.S. Mandarin Immersion program where Pinyin was introduced at Grade 3. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that Pinyin initial-final spelling--the skill to spell Chinese syllables using Pinyin…

This study aimed to determine the contributions of cognitive linguistic variables to Persian word reading and word dictation. We tested 79 second graders in Iran on different cognitive-linguistic skills, including rapid letter naming, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic skills, vocabulary knowledge, nonverbal reasoning,…

This study investigated the syntactic ability of 82 struggling adult readers who recognize words between the third and fifth grade levels. Analysis of the adults' performance on the TOLD-I:3 indicated that they were deficient on the syntactic task. Correlations found the struggling adult readers' oral language skills, written language skills, and…

Individual differences in abilities to form, access, and hone phonological representations of words are implicated in the development of oral and written language. This study addressed two important gaps in the literature concerning measurement of individual differences in phonological representation. First, we empirically examined the…

The experiment reported here explored the importance of engaging 4-year-old children's interest in the print itself during storybook reading. We explored the effect of computer animation of the print in order to draw the child's attention to each word as it was read. We also investigated the influence of illustrating that not all visual displays…

We investigated the initial development of reading and spelling in European Portuguese. First-graders, tested in February and June, had to read and spell words and pseudowords. In February there were regularity and graphemic complexity effects, indicating that these children relied on grapheme-phoneme conversion. The lexicality effect found in…