Research Findings: The current study examined whether collective small-group behavioral engagement and teacher behavior management during small-group instruction predicted print knowledge, phonological awareness, letter writing, and expressive vocabulary gains for preschoolers at-risk for literacy difficulties. This study, part of a larger…

For preschool-aged children at-risk for literacy difficulties, we examined whether classroom and home environments were jointly associated with literacy skill gains and whether environments moderated response to intervention (n = 281). We first used a person-centered approach to characterize children's classroom and home environments, identifying…

Learning to read English requires learning the complex statistical dependencies between orthography and phonology. Previous research has focused on how these statistics are learned in neural network models provided with as much training as needed. Children, however, are expected to acquire this knowledge in a few years of school with only limited…

This study investigated: 1) the influence of alphabet instructional content (letter names, letter sounds, or both) on alphabet learning and engagement of English only and dual language learner (DLL) children, and 2) the relation between children's initial status and growth in three underlying cognitive learning processes (paired-associate,…

Better understanding the mechanisms underlying developing literacy has promoted the development of more effecting reading interventions for typically developing children. Such knowledge may facilitate effective instruction of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. Hence, the current study examined the multivariate associations among phonological…

The primary goal was to expand our understanding of text-reading fluency (efficiency or automaticity): how its relation to other constructs (e.g., word reading fluency, reading comprehension) changes over time and how it is different from word-reading fluency and reading comprehension. The study examined (a) developmentally changing relations…