Separating the influences of prereading skills on early word and nonword reading

Laura R Shapiro,Julia M Carroll,Jonathan E Solity

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2013.05.011

Abstract

The essential first step for a beginning reader is to learn to match printed forms to phonological representations. For a new word, this is an effortful process where each grapheme must be translated individually (serial decoding). The role of phonological awareness in developing a decoding strategy is well known. We examined whether beginning readers recruit different skills depending on the nature of the words being read (familiar words vs. nonwords). Print knowledge, phoneme and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological short-term memory (STM), nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, auditory skills, and visual attention were measured in 392 prereaders 4 and 5years of age. Word and nonword reading were measured 9months later. We used structural equation modeling to examine the skills–reading relationship and modeled correlations between our two reading outcomes and among all prereading skills. We found that a broad range of skills were associated with reading outcomes: early print knowledge, phonological STM, phoneme awareness and RAN. Whereas all of these skills were directly predictive of nonword reading, early print knowledge was the only direct predictor of word reading. Our findings suggest that beginning readers draw most heavily on their existing print knowledge to read familiar words.

Highlights

The fundamental challenge for a beginning reader is to convert the graphemic representation of a word into a phonologically based representation
Our research confirms the importance of phonological skills in learning a decoding strategy and provides the first clear evidence of early differences in the pattern of predictors for different types of words
Whereas early print knowledge was the key predictor of familiar word reading, the influence of print knowledge on nonword reading was smaller and apparent alongside direct influences of phonological skills and rapid automatized naming (RAN)

Summary

Introduction

The fundamental challenge for a beginning reader is to convert the graphemic representation of a word into a phonologically based representation This enables access to the reader’s existing knowledge of that word, which has been gained through the process of oral language acquisition (see Hoover & Tunmer, 1993, for a discussion). This process of matching print to phonological representations is termed decoding. According to many theorists (Ehri, 1998; Grainger, Lété, Bertand, Dufau, & Ziegler, 2012; Share, 1995), it is only through the process of recoding a word into its phonological form that a child will eventually develop coarse-grained orthographic representations that enable fast access from print to reading

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