We investigated the role of linguistic and cognitive processes in reading precocity from kindergarten to grade 2. A sample of 33 precocious readers was identified that did not differ on age, gender, and parental education to a control group of 259 typical readers. The effects of verbal ability were also controlled. All children were administered a…

This study examined the effects of receiving multiple intervention services on the language, literacy, and general development of preschool children from low-income families. By employing a hierarchical linear model on a sample of 1436 children, developmental outcomes of four-year-old children receiving varying numbers of intervention services…

Models of irregular word reading that take into account both child- and word-level predictors have not been evaluated in typically developing children and children with reading difficulty (RD). The purpose of the present study was to model individual differences in irregular word reading ability among 5th grade children (N = 170), oversampled for…

This study examined the effects of a 10 week invented writing program with five-year-old preschoolers (mean age 5.7 years) on their immediate post intervention literacy skills and also the facilitative effects of the intervention on the subsequent learning to read during the first 6 months of schooling. The study included 105 children (54 girls)…

This longitudinal study examined (a) the second-grade reading outcomes of 368 children who participated in either experimental or school-designed supplemental intervention in kindergarten, and (b) the influence and interactions of learner variables and type of intervention on reading achievement. Descriptive findings indicated that percentages of…

Students' basic reading and math skills can decline significantly during the summer months. Most attribute this to the prolonged period during which young students are outside of a structured learning environment (Cooper et al 1996). While summer learning loss occurs among all income groups, the effects are more pronounced for those from…

Phonological awareness has been repeatedly reported as important for learning to read in different orthographies. It is important to understand what specific levels of phonological awareness are involved in Chinese and English for Chinese children who learn English-as-a-second-language (ESL). Measures of phonological awareness, word reading,…

Research Findings: Environmental print provides children with their earliest print experiences. This observational study investigated the frequency of mother-child environmental print referencing and its relationship with emergent literacy. A total of 35 mothers and their children (ages 3-4 years) were videotaped interacting in an environmental…

Targeted to children as young as 3 months old, there is a growing number of baby media products that claim to teach babies to read. This randomized controlled trial was designed to examine this claim by investigating the effects of a best-selling baby media product on reading development. One hundred and seventeen infants, ages 9 to 18 months,…

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether there are systematic differences in literacy skills among children from less-advantaged households, using latent profile analysis. Early reading skills were measured using the Early Arithmetic, Reading, and Learning Indicators (EARLI; DiPerna, Morgan, & Lei, 2007) literacy tasks.…

In this study 149 kindergarten children were assessed for knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, phonological awareness, and cognitive abilities. Through this it examined child and letter characteristics influencing the acquisition of alphabetic knowledge in a naturalistic context, the relationship between letter-sound knowledge and…