Purpose: Two types of orthographic knowledge were examined: i) knowledge of permissible letter combinations (general orthographic knowledge) and ii) knowledge of whole words (word-specific orthographic knowledge), to gain further insights into the relationship of general and word-specific orthographic knowledge with literacy skills. Method:…

Purpose: Reading fluency establishes the basis for the strong literacy skills needed for academic success. We aim to trace how reading fluency develops from childhood to adulthood and identify factors that influence this development. Method: In this study, 200 families were followed. All participating children (N = 200, 47% female) were ethnic…

Many children living in linguistically diverse low- and middle-income countries learn to read and write in multiple languages. Recent research provides implications for effective reading instruction with multilingual learners (e.g., Hall et al. in New Dir Child Adolesc Dev 166:145-189, 2019). However, there is limited empirical evidence on…

The aim of the study was to examine which predictor variables are related to literacy skills among monolingual Swedish (n = 269) and bilingual Finnish-Swedish (n = 229) children at the first grade in the Swedish-speaking schools in Finland. The participants were assessed in phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN),…

Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) is commonly thought of as one of the best predictors of reading achievement when compared to phonological awareness and letter name knowledge (Norton & Wolf, 2012). However, only one previous study has demonstrated significant growth following a RAN intervention (Vander Stappen & Reybroeck, 2018). This…

In this study, we aimed to determine the early cognitive and home environmental predictors of reading in Turkish-speaking children. A total of 362 children participated in the study. We monitored the children for 3 years and assessed the home environmental variables and cognitive skills in kindergarten, reading fluency at the end of the first…

Early identification of children at risk of developing reading difficulties is crucial for effective interventions. While orthographies and educational contexts differ, predictors included in early at-risk screening tend to remain rather homogeneous across countries. In this study, we compared longitudinal prediction patterns of being among the 20…

It is well established that phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) tasks reliably predict children's developing word reading abilities across a wide range of languages. However, existing research has not yet demonstrated unequivocally whether RAN and PA are independently and causally linked to reading, nor has it fully…

Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) has been widely recognized as a reliable predictor of reading proficiency. Although RAN represents the speed of cognitive processing, there are few studies that have addressed RAN as a cognitive process in its own right Furthermore, RAN performance of ELL (English Language Learners) has been less frequently…

This study examines the core predictors of the covariance in reading and arithmetic fluency and the domain-general cognitive skills that explain the core predictors and covariance. Seven-year-old Finnish children (N = 200) were assessed on rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness, letter knowledge, verbal counting, number writing,…

Background: Reading development in agglutinating African languages is a relatively underresearched area. While numerous studies highlight the low comprehension levels among learners reading in African languages in South Africa, little has been done to probe beneath this 'comprehension iceberg' in terms of decoding skills. Aim: As a tentative step…

The purpose of the present research was to provide information to the community about the reading subskill profiles of children with dyslexia in primary and secondary school students. 175 children (aged 7-15 yrs) were examined on a varied set of phonological coding, spelling and fluent reading tasks. For this purpose, students' fluent reading were…

This study examined developmental profiles of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Grades 1 to 9 (ages 7 to 15) in a large Finnish sample (N = 2,518). In addition, early predictors of the profiles were analyzed with respect to kindergarten cognitive skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid automized naming [RAN], number…

Although phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are confirmed as early predictors of reading in a large number of orthographies, it is as yet unclear whether the predictive patterns are universal or language specific. This was examined in a longitudinal study across Grades 1 and 2 with 1,120 children acquiring one of five…

This study describes trajectories of early literacy skill development of 99 children (n = 55 boys) in their first year of primary school in New Zealand (NZ). Children were assessed twice weekly for 8 weeks on Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2011) First Sound Fluency (FSF) and AIMSweb Letter Sound…