Preschool linguistic indicators of elementary reading achievement

Abstract

Literacy is a relatively new development in the evolution of human cognitive abilities. This biological-cultural gap can be bridged only by explicit instruction that modifies the operation of the underlying visual and linguistic neural structures. Literacy development relies on very different fundamental abilities, some of which are genetically determined while others are shaped by early experiences. The process of reading acquisition is therefore very vulnerable as it depends on the early development of different cognitive domains. The main questions of the current research are: (1) What characterises children who are at risk of reading disorders among Hungarian preschool children? (2) What are the early linguistic indicators of poor reading development? Our short-term longitudinal study followed 148 children from kindergarten to first grade through the initial processes of learning to read. We explored the relationship between earlier linguistic skills and later reading achievements by measuring a set of linguistic skills in kindergarten age and reading performance in first grade. Our preliminary results suggest that the group of children with the poorest reading outcomes has not only been significantly weaker in phonological processing tasks but in a number of language skills according to preschool assessments. Poor readers showed significantly lower levels than children with average reading outcomes in phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic tasks. Results suggest that reading outcomes among first-grade children might be predictable based on a screening test measuring linguistic skills at different levels of language. This result makes the early identification and development of children at risk for reading disorders possible.