The present study explored whether phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA) and visual attention (VA) independently predict word and pseudoword reading accuracy in native Arabic-speaking children from grades 4 and 5. A total of 141 participants took part in the study, and were divided into two groups of readers with (n = 30) and…

The same-different task is a classic paradigm that requires participants to judge whether two successively presented stimuli are the same or different. While this task is simple, with results that have been replicated many times, response times (RTs) and accuracy for both same and different decisions remain difficult to model. The biggest obstacle…

"Tender Shoots" compared two book-reading and conversation approaches for parents and preschoolers to an activity-based control group. The "Rich Reading and Reminiscing" (RRR) condition taught parents to converse about the storyline; the "Strengthening Sound Sensitivity" (SSS) condition taught parents to converse…

Unlike alphabetic languages, Chinese text marks no word demarcation. Previous research inserted word-demarcating spaces into Chinese text but found inconsistent effects on reading efficiency. To address the potential trade-off effects of the additional length caused by inserted spaces, this study introduces color-and-font formatting as a word…

Reading skills provide the foundation for academic success. From the beginning of school, students should be taught different ways of using language to help them learn and communicate about academic content. This brief discusses two areas of literacy development that students must learn so that they can do well in school: "foundational…

The aim of this study is to examine the basic vertical letters based on the opinions of the primary school teachers. This qualitative research study employed phenomenology as a research method. Critical sampling and appropriate sampling methods were used in determining the participants. The participants of the study consisted of 111 classroom…

The issues of language policy and rights of younger generation are especially topical in the view of the 20-21th century international legislation concerning linguistic and ethnic diversity of a multinational state. The research aims to outline key stages of language policy development through federal and regional laws in Russia, to reveal…

Recent research has found that children reverse mainly the left-oriented characters when writing from memory (e.g. they write [iota] and [epsilon] instead of J and 3). In order to obtain an objective definition of the left-orientation of a character, the ratings of the level of left-orientation of all the asymmetrical capital letters and digits by…

The potential of high-variability phonetic training (HVPT) to help FL learners improve their pronunciation is well documented. However, research exploring learners' perceptions of the approach adopted after having experienced training is scarce. Likewise, the choice of labels adopted for training is not self-evident and has not been studied…

The study focuses on the beliefs of Arabic-speaking mothers in Israel relating to early literacy, and the relations between their beliefs and their children's actual early literacy skills. Participants included 113 mothers and their 5-6-year-old preschool children. At the families' homes, mothers reported about the richness of the home literacy…

A portion of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit a strength in early word reading referred to as hyperlexia (HPL), yet it remains unclear what mechanisms underlie this strength. Typically developing children (TD) acquire phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge and language skills as precursors to word reading. We compared these…

The goal of the paper was to investigate whether morphological units -- stems and suffixes -- influence orthographic processing by modulating visual attention demands to the task. Orthographic processing was measured with a visual one-back task requiring letters to be detected within pseudowords not including stems/suffixes, or containing real…

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…

The current study aimed to investigate Saudi preschool teachers' beliefs about emergent literacy skills and practices. To this end, an explanatory, sequential mixed methods research design was adopted. The study involved two phases. The first involved a Q methodology approach to answer the overarching questions, "What are Saudi preschool…

Studies investigating relations between morphological awareness and literacy in German, a language with a rather transparent but asymmetric orthography, are sparse. Little is known about the role of grade level for these relationships and of their relative strength compared to those between other language-related variables and literacy skills.…