Working memory has been proposed to account for the differential rates in progress young children make in writing. One crucial aspect of learning to write is the encoding (i.e., integration) and retrieval of the correct phoneme-grapheme pairings, known as binding. In addition to executive functions, binding is regarded as central to the concept of…

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine whether young learners of varying reading and spelling performance, identified in Grade 2, can be distinguished retrospectively from kindergarten, based on their growth profiles in cognitive (planning, attention, working memory--WM) and linguistic (phonological--PA and naming speed--RAN)…

Evidence of sensitivity to graphotactic and morphological patterns in English spelling has been extensively examined in monolinguals. Comparatively few studies have examined bilinguals' sensitivity to spelling regularities. The present study compared late Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals on their sensitivity to systematic…

Readers often struggle to identify the main ideas in expository texts. Existing research and instruction provide some guidance on how to encourage readers to identify main ideas. However, there is substantial variability in how main ideas are operationalized and how readers are prompted to identify main ideas. This variability hinders…

This study investigates the possibility that solitary dialog, in which individuals construct in writing a hypothetical dialogic argument, may more fully reveal individual skill achievement in argument than do conventional argumentive essays. A sample of 54 11-12-year-old Chinese students individually composed such written dialogs, subsequent to…

Vulnerability of morphosyntactic production, including grammatical aspect, has been identified in at least some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to typologically different languages. However, Tovar et al. (2015) found strengths in comprehending grammatical aspect in English-exposed children with ASD, suggesting that the…

The main purpose of this longitudinal research was to study the effects of transcription skills, text generation skills and self-regulation on Icelandic children's writing, compare their effects on two different text genres and see if it changes with age, from second to fourth grade. Eighty-seven Icelandic children were followed up from first…

Bilingualism appears to be related to poor language and reading comprehension in the instructional language (L2). However, in the long term, an early age of second language acquisition (AoA) may produce higher levels of second language skills than a later onset of L2 exposure. Most studies on school-aged second language learners (L2 learners)…

Reading prosody is considered one of the essential markers of reading fluency, alongside accuracy and speed. The aim of our study was to investigate how development of reading prosody in Spanish children varies with sentence type and length. We compared primary school children from the third and fifth grades with an adult sample. Participants were…

The current study examined statistically significant differences between struggling and adequate readers using a multicomponent model of reading comprehension in 796 sixth through eighth graders, with a primary focus on word reading and vocabulary. Path analyses and Wald tests were used to investigate the direct and indirect relations of word…

This study examined (1) whether working memory and higher-level languages skills--inferencing and comprehension monitoring--accounted for individual differences among Chinese children in Chinese reading comprehension, after controlling for age, Chinese word reading and oral language skills, and (2) whether children with specific language…

As recent studies and theoretical assumptions suggest that the quality of texts composed by children and adolescents is affected by their transcription skills, this experimental field trial aims at investigating the impact of combined handwriting/spelling training on fluency, spelling and text quality among normally developing 3rd graders…

The study aimed to deepen the understanding of parental sensitivity to their children's abilities and the nature of their scaffolding during writing tasks. We compared the parent-child writing interactions of three groups: precocious readers (PRs), same age preschoolers (SA), and older children with the same reading level (SRL) as the PRs. Each of…

This study examined the contributions of vocabulary and spelling to the reading comprehension of students in grades 6-10 who were and were not classified as English language learners. Results indicate that vocabulary accounted for greater between-grade differences and unique variance (?R[superscript 2] = 0.11-0.31) in comprehension as compared to…

Almost half of American adults struggle with reading but there is a dearth of reading-related assessments for these adults. In turn, researchers and practitioners use assessments designed for children with these adults. This study examined the psychometric and descriptive attributes of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)…