Common Core Reading Standard 10 not only prescribes the difficulty of texts students should become able to read, but also the difficulty diet of texts schools should ask their students to read across the school year. The use of quantitative text-assessment tools in the implementation of this standard warrants an examination into the validity of…

The purpose of this brief is to provide information to state, district, and school personnel seeking support to determine whether their students are on a path to postsecondary success. The College and Career Readiness and Success Center (CCRS Center) has received technical assistance requests from a number of states regarding factors that predict…

Discusses relation between verbal ability and metamemory and how these two factors relate to the later recallability of material. A study is described that separated 32 children into high and average verbal ability groups, administered a metamemorial questionnaire, and tested recall one week later. (Author/LRW)

Spatial ability based on measures of mental rotation, and spatial experience based on self-reported participation in visual-arts as well as spatial-orientation activities were assessed in a sample of 337 Chinese, gifted students. Consistent with past findings for the general population, there were gender differences in spatial ability favoring…

Shows that there are beneficial uses of reading expectancy formulas in general, but that there are also factors that make it necessary to use caution when dealing with these formulas. (Author/GW)

The Rapid Automatized Naming Test was studied cross sectionally in a sample of kindergartners (n=342) at risk for reading disability and longitudinally in an epidemiologically normal sample of children (n=160). Findings indicate the absolute color/object naming speed was strongly related to reading level and vocabulary across grades. (Author/CR)

Planning and debugging strategies and group processes predicting learning of computer programming were studied in 30 students aged 11 to 14. Students showed little advance planning. Factors associated with learning included high-level planning of program chunks, debugging of single statements, explaining, and verbalizing aloud while typing.…

Reports that children's reading speed for paragraphs in which either words, syllables, or letters were spaced widely apart was a good predictor of reading ability in grades one through three, but not in grades four through six. (GT)

Reports on three studies comparing the reading and phonological skills of children with Down Syndrome (DS) and younger normally developing children of similar reading level. Notes that for children with DS, letter-sound knowledge did not predict reading. Suggests that children with DS do not possess full phoneme awareness. (PM)

Performance by 38 elementary reading-disabled and above-average readers was compared on a series of 6 measures of phonological awareness, including tests of ability to segment, blend, and manipulate phonemes. Results suggest that tasks requiring blending and manipulation of phonemes, in addition to segmentation, may predict decoding ability best.…

Concurrent and prospective correlations among reading, spelling, phonemic awareness, verbal memory, rapid serial naming, and IQ were examined in 19 students with reading disabilities and 36 controls at grades two and eight. The strongest predictors of reading disabilities were cognitive-linguistic measures, particularly rapid naming. (Author/CR)

Cross-validates the Simple View of Reading using a sample of children with English as their first language. Support the idea that reading comprehension ability can be decomposed into decoding and listening comprehension abilities, but does not support the assumption that most of the substantive variance in reading comprehension can be explained by…

Details a project in which cognition, language, early literacy, phonological awareness, and reading skills were examined in a group of adolescents and children with Down syndrome and a group of typically developed children match for nonverbal cognition. Concludes that language was a strong predictor in the group with Down syndrome. (PM)

Examines the relationship of auditory-visual integration and reading performance in a sample of British 8 to 9 year olds. (HOD)

A study involving 205 children from the Danish island of Bornholm found significant paths from early language abilities at age 3 through expressive and receptive language in kindergarten via language awareness in kindergarten and word decoding in grade 2 to sentence reading in grades 3 and 4. (Author/CR)