Educationally-oriented measures of handwriting fluency--tasks such as written alphabet recall and sentence copying--conflate graphomotor skill and various higher-level abilities. Direct measurement of pen control when forming letters requires analysis of pen-tip velocity associated with the production of sub-letter features that, in a skilled…

The present study examined the strategies used by Greek novice readers in the initial phases of reading acquisition. Fifty (50) children were assessed at four successive testing periods throughout 1st grade of Primary School. Thus, 21 boys (42%) and 29 girls (58%) participated in this study. Their mean age at the beginning of the study was 74.43…

In the present study, a 5-week tablet-based word reading efficiency game intervention (Reading Turbo) was integrated in a comprehensive phonics-based reading curriculum. The aims of the study were to examine whether the game would advance children's word reading efficiency, and to determine the extent to which pre-reading capacities and in-game…

Research consistently documents that girls outperform boys in literacy achievement, yet, when considering the starting point--early literacy--we do not have consensus on the origin, meaningful nature, or persistence of such differences. In this two-part study analyzing 5,816 Norwegian students (48.1% girls, average age of 6.1 years), we first…

The main objective of this study was to analyze what writing measures, or combination of measures, would be most appropriate for early detection of students at risk of presenting future difficulties in learning to write in Spanish, in terms of tasks, scoring indices (dependent, independent and accurate-precision) and duration. A sample of 231…

Reading in alphabetic orthography requires analysis and recognition of specific attributes of visual stimuli, and generation, reactivation, and use of mental images of letters and words. This study evaluated the role of visual analysis and mental imagery in reading performances of students at different stages of reading acquisition. Reading…

The goal was to assess the role of invented spelling to subsequent reading and spelling as proposed by the Nested Skills Model of Early Literacy Acquisition. 107 English-speaking children were tested at the beginning of kindergarten and grade 1, and at the end of grade 1. The findings provided support for the proposed model. First, the role played…

The aim of this study was to analyze whether children with and without difficulties in handwriting, spelling, or both differed in alphabet writing when using a keyboard. The total sample consisted of 1,333 children from Grades 1 through 3. Scores on the spelling and handwriting factors from the "Early Grade Writing Assessment" (Jiménez,…

The present longitudinal study aimed to investigate the development of word decoding skills during incremental phonics instruction in Dutch as a transparent orthography. A representative sample of 973 Dutch children in the first grade (M[subscript age] = 6;1, SD = 0;5) was exposed to incremental subsets of Dutch grapheme-phoneme correspondences…

We examined the relative contribution of visual abilities, accessibility of letter names, and phonological awareness, to text reading speed and accuracy of Arabic in first, third, and fifth grades. The results revealed that for all levels of skill, phonological awareness contributes significantly to reading accuracy, to the same degree. For…

Phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are well-known kindergarten predictors of later word recognition skills, but it is not clear whether they predict developments in accuracy or speed, or both. The present longitudinal study of 172 Danish beginning readers found that speed of word recognition mainly developed…

We examined the developmental relationships between home literacy environment (parent teaching, shared book reading) and emergent literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, rapid naming speed) in kindergarten, reading accuracy and fluency in Grade 1, and reading comprehension in Grades 2 and 3 in a sample of Canadian…