Abstract
The objective of this study is to determine the contribution made by knowledge of letters, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric rapid automatized naming at the ages of six and seven to the ability of Spanish children to read words at 7 years of age. A total of 116 Spanish-speaking school children took part in the study, from schools located in an average socio-cultural setting, without special educational needs. The reading ability of these pupils was evaluated at the age of seven, and cognitive variables were assessed at 6 and 7 years of age. Descriptive-exploratory analyses, bivariate analyses, and multivariate regressions were performed. The results show that cognitive variables measured at these ages contribute differently to the ability to read words at 7 years of age. Rapid naming does not seem to influence word reading; knowledge of letters no longer influences word reading as children grow older; and phonological awareness and phonological memory maintain their contribution to the explanation of word reading. These results indicate that reading in Spanish depends on different cognitive variables and that this relationship varies according to age. The findings have key educational implications in terms of teaching reading skills and the prevention of specific learning difficulties in Spanish Primary Education.
Highlights
In recent years, an important strand of research has been established on the different variables that determine the acquisition of reading skill
The statistically significant correlations found between the cognitive variables measured at 6 years of age, when students were in Year 1 of primary school, and the reading of words measured at the age of seven, when in Year 2, were knowledge of letters (r = 0.39, p < 0.01), phonological awareness (r = 0.37, p < 0.01), phonological memory (r = 0.32, p < 0.01), and non-alphanumeric rapid naming (r = −0.21, p < 0.05)
When the students were 7 years old, with all the variables measured at the same time, in decreasing order according to the size of the correlation, a relationship was found between the variables phonological awareness (r = 0.38, p < 0.01), knowledge of letters (r = 0.29, p < 0.01), phonological memory (r = 0.21, p < 0.05), and alphanumeric rapid naming (r = −0.21, p < 0.05) and word reading
Summary
An important strand of research has been established on the different variables that determine the acquisition of reading skill. Numerous studies have found diverse relationships between different cognitive variables and learning to read in languages of different linguistic consistency and at different ages (Li et al, 2012; Caravolas et al, 2013; Asadi et al, 2017; López-Escribano et al, 2018; Mcilraith, 2018; Bar-Kochva and Nevo, 2019; Torppa et al, 2019; Vibulpatanavong and Evans, 2019; Wijaythilake et al, 2019). The theory of granularity supports the idea that the degree of consistency is relative, since a language will be less orthographic consistent when graphemes represent the phonemes in a less precise way due to their phonological structure (coarse grain), whereas it will be more consistent when graphemes represent more precisely the phonemes (fine grain) (Ziegler and Goswami, 2005) This could justify the predictors of reading to be different depending the grain of each language and the interest of our research
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
