Background: Learning to read is a complex process that involves phonological and orthographic processing abilities, broader language skills and cognitive processes across all writing systems. Although these components remain common, the pace of acquisition of phonological and orthographic processing and reading abilities differ across writing…

Soares, Lages, Oliveira, and Cabrera-Hernández (2019) recently showed that the mirror-letter interference effect observed for words containing reversal letters was reliable for words containing left-oriented mirror-letters as 'd', but not for words containing right-oriented mirror-letters as 'b', thus indicating that the directionality of the…

Background: Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children may experience difficulties in word decoding development. Aims: We aimed to compare and predict the incremental word decoding development in first grade in Dutch DHH and hearing children, as a function of kindergarten reading precursors. Methods and procedures: In this study, 25 DHH, and 41…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the direct and indirect relations between short-term memory (STM), reading, oral language, and writing at the letter, word, and discourse levels in young, developing writers both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Method: Participants were 449 English-speaking kindergarten students (52% female)…

There is compelling empirical evidence suggesting that more authentic learning tasks improve second language learners' motivation and learning (Long, 1996; Van Lier, 2014). However, most research on this topic has focused on Germanic and Romance L2 languages, primarily in the context of speaking skills. Little is known about the effect of task…

The "recycling hypothesis" posits that the word recognition system is built upon minimal modifications to the neural architecture used in object recognition. In two masked priming lexical decision studies, we examined whether "mirror generalization," a phenomenon in object recognition, occurs in word recognition. In Study 1, we…

Walter Ong points out that no one can write naturally, because writing is a completely artificial technique we need to acquire through education. The technology of literacy as writing letters begets a dividing line between "literates" and "illiterates," since literacy cannot be acquired otherwise. When we review the early…

Mind wandering occurs when a reader's thoughts are unrelated to the text's ideas. We examined the relation between mind wandering and readers' memory for text. More specifically, we assessed whether mind wandering inhibits the reader's development of the situation model and thus their ability to identify and recall the text's most central ideas.…

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:…

Background: As a group, autistic children with high support needs (with adaptive functioning in the range of an intellectual disability) are at risk of significant literacy difficulties. We investigated the parent-reported home literacy environment of this group of children. Method: Sixty-two parents of autistic children (4.5 to 18.25 years)…

This brief focuses on the 2023-2024 school-year implementation of "My Reading Academy" by the Early Learning Coalition of Palm Beach County (ELC PBC) that led its deployment in voluntary pre-K (VPK) classrooms across the School District of Palm Beach County (SDPBC) and independently operated for-profit and nonprofit centers, including…

This brief highlights Tyler Independent School District's 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 implementation of "My Reading Academy," an adaptive, supplemental solution with interactive learning games, instruction, and books in English, designed to create fluent, strategic readers. "My Reading Academy" was offered to Emergent Multilingual…

A growing number of early childhood interventions are intended to be used by classroom teachers to support children's emergent literacy development, yet we know little about for whom such interventions might be effective. In this study, we examined whether children's initial emergent literacy skills (alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness,…

A growing number of early childhood interventions are intended to be used by classroom teachers to support children's emergent literacy development, yet we know little about for whom such interventions might be effective. In this study, we examined whether children's initial emergent literacy skills (alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness,…

Purpose: We hypothesize that alphabet learning during early childhood matters for reading and spelling in alphabetic languages. In this preregistered study, we conceptually replicated and extended work on children's alphabet learning trajectories and associations with Grade 1 outcomes. Method: Preschool-aged English-speaking U.S. children (n =…