Reading Skills In Children Research Articles

Getting to Best: Physician Development as a Developmental Process

Getting to Best: Physician Development as a Developmental Process

The Home Literacy Environment and Preschool Children's Reading Skills and Interest

Research Findings: This study explored the association between the home literacy environment (HLE), conceptualized as comprising parents’ reading beliefs and home literacy practices, and preschoolers’ reading skills and reading interest. It also identified factors in the HLE that predict emerging reading competence and motivation to read. A total of 193 children age 6 years from 14 preschools across Singapore and their parents participated in the study. The parents completed a reading belief inventory, a family literacy activity inventory, and a demographic questionnaire that surveyed the child's reading interest. The children were administered a battery of standardized literacy tests. The study found a moderate relationship between the HLE and children's reading competencies and a strong relationship between the HLE and children's reading interest. When parents’ education level and children's age were controlled, hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that family literacy activities contributed more unique variance to children's reading outcomes and reading interest than did parents’ reading beliefs. Active parental involvement was the strongest component of the HLE, with parent–child engagement in reading and writing emerging as the best predictor of both the child's emerging reading skills and reading interest. With respect to reading beliefs, parents’ efficacy in supporting literacy development before their child attended school positively predicted reading competence, as did parents’ affect and verbal participation in fostering reading interest. However, verbal participation negatively predicted Singapore children's reading competence. Practice or Policy: The implications of the results were discussed.

Development of reading-related skills in Chinese and English among Hong Kong Chinese children with and without dyslexia

This 2-year longitudinal study sought to identify a developmental pattern of Chinese and English reading skills in children with and without dyslexia from 6 to 8years of age. Three groups of 15 children each—those with dyslexia, age-matched (AM) controls, and reading-matched (RM) controls—participated. Dyslexia was diagnosed at 8years of age. All children were tested on phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), morphological awareness, word reading, and vocabulary knowledge in both Chinese and English and also speed of processing skill. AM controls outperformed the group with dyslexia on all measures except for phonological awareness, English word reading, and vocabulary. However, those with dyslexia and AM controls developed at a similar rate across all reading-related skills from 6 to 8years of age. Compared with the RM controls, the group with dyslexia scored higher in phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary knowledge in both Chinese and English and also in English word reading but scored similarly in RAN. Children with dyslexia, thus, manifested clear difficulties in Chinese vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness, and RAN as well as general speed of processing, representing a developmental lag in cognitive skills. Among these, RAN deficits are likely to be the most severe deficits in Chinese children with dyslexia.

Developmental changes of early reading skills in six-year-old Polish children and GraphoGame as a computer-based intervention to support them

The aim of this randomised crossover study was to investigate the development of reading skills in children with low letter knowledge in the first year of their formal reading instruction and to assess the effectiveness of GraphoGame Polish (PL) – intensive computer game-based training in recognition of grapheme-phoneme associations. The results show that even though children with initial poor letter knowledge finally achieved the level of the reference group in terms of letter naming, there was still a significant gap between them in reading speed of words and pseudowords. The experiment investigating the training effectiveness did not show significant differences between the GraphoGame playing group and the group playing a maths game in respect to changes in letter knowledge. The reading skills of both groups of players increased between the assessments with a similar pace. The analysis of levels' difficulty showed that differentiating between phonologically similar letters was more difficult than between visually similar letters for learners with reading acquisition difficulties. The findings of this study in comparison to other similar studies conducted for other languages are discussed together with its limitations and possible modifications which could improve GraphoGame efficacy for Polish poor readers.

Relationship between magnocellular function and reading skills in children: a study using visual evoked potentials

Relationship between magnocellular function and reading skills in children: a study using visual evoked potentials

Temporary but not trivial: Language and reading skills in children with ongoing glue ear

‘Most of the time, I’m like, to the teacher like, “Could you repeat that, I didn’t hear you.”’(Daisy, 14 years)‘There are things I get stressed about, like annoyed about; stressed about like when I can’t hear all of the time I have to get things repeated.’(Stewie, 10 years)‘They’ve moved me so that I have my good ear facing the teacher… so in the input I can actually hear.’(Russell 9 years)

The Contribution of American Sign Language to Sign-Print Bilingualism in Children

Sign languages serve as successful communication, providing access to spontaneous, interactive language for some individuals with a hearing loss. However, for these individuals there is a concern for the development of reading skills in a second language, a bilingual task. Previous studies indicated that a correlation exists between sign language knowledge and written language comprehension for older children and adults. The current study examines the predictive relationship between American Sign Language (ASL) knowledge and the developing English reading skills for children in 1st and 2nd grade. The results of this study indicated that ASL knowledge was a leading indicator of later English reading ability, providing evidence that sign language is a strong predictive factor in enabling young deaf children to acquire reading ability in a second language.

Breastfeeding, Parenting, and Early Cognitive Development

To explain why breastfeeding is associated with children's cognitive development. By using a nationally representative longitudinal survey of early childhood (N = 7500), we examined how breastfeeding practices, the early introduction of solid foods, and putting an infant to bed with a bottle were associated with cognitive development across early childhood. We also explored whether this link can be explained by parenting behaviors and maternal education. There is a positive relationship between predominant breastfeeding for 3 months or more and child reading skills, but this link is the result of cognitively supportive parenting behaviors and greater levels of education among women who predominantly breastfed. We found little-to-no relationship between infant feeding practices and the cognitive development of children with less-educated mothers. Instead, reading to a child every day and being sensitive to a child's development were significant predictors of math and reading readiness outcomes. Although breastfeeding has important benefits in other settings, the encouragement of breastfeeding to promote school readiness does not appear to be a key intervention point. Promoting parenting behaviors that improve child cognitive development may be a more effective and direct strategy for practitioners to adopt, especially for disadvantaged children.

What Parents Know About How Well Their Children Are Doing in School

ABSTRACT The authors used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten cohort to examine whether parents’ knowledge of their children's reading and mathematics skills varies by academic domain and parents’ income group or ethnicity. Of particular interest was how parents’ knowledge is moderated by school- or home-based involvement. Parents’ knowledge was moderately related to their children's reading and mathematics scores. However, there were systematic income- and ethnicity-related differences in the correlations. Poor parents were reportedly less involved at home and school than nonpoor parents. White, non-Hispanic parents were more involved at school than other parents. School-based rather than home-based involvement was related to the strength of the correlations between parents’ knowledge and children's reading and mathematics scores.

Sight Word and Phonics Training in Children With Dyslexia

The aims of this study were to (a) compare sight word training and phonics training in children with dyslexia, and (b) determine if different orders of sight word and phonics training have different effects on the reading skills of children with dyslexia. One group of children (n = 36) did 8 weeks of phonics training (reading via grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules) and then 8 weeks of sight word training (reading irregular words as a whole), one group did the reverse (n = 36), and one group did phonics and sight word training simultaneously for two 8-week periods (n = 32). We measured the effects of phonics and sight word training on sight word reading (trained irregular word reading accuracy, untrained irregular word reading accuracy), phonics reading (nonword reading accuracy, nonword reading fluency), and general reading (word reading fluency, reading comprehension). Sight word training led to significant gains in sight word reading measures that were larger than gains made from phonics training, phonics training led to statistically significant gains in a phonics reading measure that were larger than gains made from sight word training, and both types of training led to significant gains in general reading that were similar in size. Training phonics before sight words had a slight advantage over the reverse order. We discuss the clinical implications of these findings for improving the treatment and assessment of children with dyslexia.

Ever Try Teaching a Dog To Read? Implicit Theories of Reading Ability

ABSTRACTWhen explaining academic outcomes in specific content areas, people reveal their implicit theories of academic ability. Those who hold an entity theory generally attribute differences in achievement to stable, uncontrollable factors. In contrast, those who hold an incremental theory take into account controllable psychological or environmental variables. Implicit theories affect motivation and are expected to crystallize by about fourth grade. This research examined changes in southwest suburban third graders' implicit theories of reading ability for self, others, and other species in a quasi-experimental, crossover design employing entity and incremental treatments. Seventy-one third-graders completed a 16-week reading program teaching a dog tasks that supported and challenged entity theories of what dogs can do. A therapy dog acted as our confederate because reading to dogs has been shown to improve children's reading skills, but not necessarily change their beliefs about reading ability, because beliefs are resistant to change and require personal experiences that encourage revision. Repeated measures analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA) revealed a significant change in students' theories of reading ability (F(1, 59) = 60.61, p < 0.001). Students' incremental scores increased following the entity condition (F(1, 64) = 1.165, p < 0.02); their entity scores decreased following both conditions (F(1, 59) = 21.90, p < 0.001). Students' implicit theories of reading ability for self, other, and other species did not differ; a significant effect of belief in dogs' reading ability (F(1, 59) = 29.04 p < 0.001) was observed. Implications for increasing children's reading motivation and achievement are discussed.

A Research on Reading Model of Interactive Children Picture Book Application Based on the Theory of “Zone of Proximal Development”

The cultivation of early reading skills of children promotes the development of children’s language, thinking, emotion and intelligence, and exerts profound influence on future studying. In this paper, the priority is given to study of innovation of the reading model in interactive picture book application. The existing major four reading models were analyzed in this paper. Based on the theory of “zone of proximal development (ZPD)” , a brand new framework of layered reading model was proposed. It is of great significance to the design and development of electronic products of early reading skills of children.

Mothers' reading skills and child survival in Nigeria: Examining the relevance of mothers' decision-making power

Mothers' literacy skills are emerging as a key determinant of children's health and survival in low-income contexts, with emphasis on the cognitive and psychological agency that literacy skills provide. This work has clearly established a strong association between mothers' reading skills—a key subcomponent of broader literacy and language skills—and child mortality. However, this relatively nascent literature has not yet considered how broader social structures condition the process. In Nigeria and in sub-Saharan Africa more broadly, gender-based social inequality constrains many mothers' decision-making power over children's health matters; this structural feature may condition the association between mothers' reading skills and child mortality. This paper uses data from the 2003 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey (N = 12,076) to test the conditionality of the relationship between mothers' reading skills and child survival on mothers' decision-making power, highlighting how structural realities should factor more heavily into this individual-action-oriented literature. Among Nigerian children whose mothers have decision-making power, mothers' reading skills convey a 27 percent lower risk of child mortality; however, for children whose mothers lack decision-making power, mothers' reading skills do not yield a significant survival advantage. Overall, these findings support the need for future work to further analyze how broader social structures condition the benefits of mothers' reading skills for children's health.

Maternal teaching of reading and children's reading skills in Grade 1: Patterns and predictors of positive and negative associations

The main aim of the study was to identify subgroups of children based on the associations between the reported frequency of maternal teaching of reading and children's reading skills, and whether these subgroups differ with respect to mother-related (i.e., education, controlling behavior, and emotions in homework situations) and child-related (i.e., reading habits and gender) background factors. Data were gathered from 1460 mother–child dyads. The reading skills of 6- to 7-year-old Finnish-speaking children were measured at the beginning and at the end of Grade 1. Information from mothers was gathered by questionnaires. Regression Mixture Modeling identified four latent subgroups of children in which the frequency of maternal teaching showed a differential contribution to children's subsequent reading skills: Among 14% of the children with low reading skills, maternal teaching was positively associated with children's reading skills; among 22% of the children who showed relatively low reading skills, maternal teaching had no association with children's reading skills; among 12% of the children who were good readers, maternal teaching had no association with children's reading skills; and among the remaining 52%, maternal teaching had a negative association children's reading skills. The subgroup of children for whom maternal teaching positively contributed to reading skills was characterized by high levels of controlling behavior by their mothers but simultaneous positive emotional support in homework situations.

Performance of Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities on Early-Grade Curriculum-Based Measures of Word and Passage Reading Fluency

Alternate assessments have been used for the last 10 years to evaluate schools' efforts to teach children with significant cognitive disabilities. However, few studies have examined the reading skills of children who participate in these assessments. The purpose of this study was to extend understanding of the reading skills of this population by administering early-grade word and passage reading fluency curriculum-based measures to a sample of 7,440 students in Grades 3 through 8 and 11. Overall, the performance on curriculum-based measures and the relationship with alternate assessment performance varied based upon disability, grade, and level of alternate assessment. The authors discuss implications for test developers and teachers along with future directions for research.

A Test of Everyday Reading Comprehension (TERC)

The aim of this study was to develop a standardised test of everyday reading comprehension for children in Australian schools. To this end, we developed two forms for the Test of Everyday Comprehension (TERC) and developed norms for children aged 6 to 12 and in grades 1 to 6. Measures of parallel form reliability indicated that the two TERC forms were equal in difficulty and measured a common concept. Measures of inter-rater reliability indicated that scoring the two TERC forms was simple enough to minimise differences between testers. Ideally, the TERC should be used (1) as a screening test for poor reading comprehension in primary-school children and (2) as a tool to communicate to parents the impact that a child's reading difficulty can have on their everyday life. Poor performance on the TERC should be followed-up by tests that target other aspects of the child's reading and language skills to locate the source of their reading comprehension problem.

Computer‐assisted Interventions Targeting Reading Skills of Children with Reading Disabilities – A Longitudinal Study

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of three computerized interventions on the reading skills of children with reading disabilities in Grade 2. This longitudinal intervention study included five test sessions over 1 year. Two test points occur before the intervention, and three afterwards. The last follow-up was conducted 1 year after the first measurement. One hundred thirty children in Grade 2 participated in the study. Three groups of children with reading difficulties received computerized training programmes: one aimed at improving word decoding skills and phonological abilities, the second focused on word and sentence levels and the third was a combination of these two training programmes. A fourth group received ordinary special instruction. In addition, there was one comparison group with age-matched typical readers. All groups improved their reading skills. The group that received combined training showed greater improvement than the one with ordinary special instruction and the group of typical readers at two follow-ups. The longitudinal results indicate additional positive results for the group that received the combined training, the majority of students from that group being no longer judged to be needing special education 1 year after the intervention.

Comparison between reading comprehension and phonetic and non-phonetic reading skills in children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants

The primary purpose of this study was to explore the reading comprehension skills and phonetic and non-phonetic reading skills in the English language in both, children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implantation. Research in this area is limited with respect to the Indian context and hence a study dealing with these aspects has the potential to broaden our understanding of benefits of cochlear implantation as it helps with academics. The study involved a total of 74 participants across three grades, 5th, 6th and 7th of which 57 were CWNH and 17 were CWCI. All were assessed based on scores attained on 4 assessment tasks, phonetic reading skills, non-phonetic reading skills, short reading passage comprehension and long reading passage comprehension. On statistical analysis, there was a significant difference between scores obtained on phonetic reading, short reading passage comprehension and long reading passage comprehension between 5th and 6th as well as 6th and 7th graders of CWNH. However, no significant difference was recorded between all three standards (5th, 6th and 7th) on all 4 assessment tasks for CWCI group. When grade level comparisons were made between CWNH and CWCI, there was no statistically significant difference of scores on any of the 4 tasks between the two groups at any grade level except that 6th graders of CWNH group performed better in the short reading passage comprehension task as compared to 6th graders of CWCI. Keywords: cochlear implant, reading comprehension, phonetic words, non-phonetic words

Decreasing Reading Differences in Children from Disadvantaged Backgrounds: The Effects of an Early Literacy Intervention

Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds (SES) are at increased risk of reading problems. Although phonological awareness consistently emerges as a critical literacy skill for children, little research exists regarding the effects of the acquisition of phonological awareness skills on decreasing the reading achievement gap between children of different SES levels. In this study, 50 first graders from low SES backgrounds were randomly assigned to receivelO weeks of phonological awareness intervention or a control condition. In addition, 25 first graders from middle-high SES backgrounds served as a comparison group. A significant difference in phonological awareness skills was found between children in the low SES intervention group who received the phonological awareness intervention and similar children in the control group who did not receive the intervention. Reading skill differences between the low SES intervention and control groups were found at follow-up 24 weeks later but not immediately following intervention. Although the gap in reading skills of children from the low SES intervention group and the middle-high SES comparison group decreased, reading differences remained. Implications of findings with regard to prevention and identification of children at-risk for reading difficulties, as well as planning and implementing early literacy intervention for children from disadvantaged backgrounds are provided.

Two Wheels are Better than One: The Importance of Capturing the Home Literacy Environment in Large-Scale Assessments of Reading

Children's reading skill development is influenced by availability of reading materials, reading habits and opportunity to read. Save the Children's Literacy Boost data have replicated this finding across numerous developing contexts. Meanwhile international large-scale reading assessments do not capture detail on current home literacy. The consistent positive association of reading skills with home-based materials and reading habits and the negative association with chores suggest that in developing contexts, opportunity to read outside the classroom is as important to development of reading skills as opportunity to learn these skills inside the classroom. Without data on home literacy environment, calls for action center only on schools and policies, and thus incompletely address learning and equity. Results of Literacy Boost program evaluations find that participants with reading opportunities outside of schools learned more than non-participating peers. Children from homes without books, without readers and without reading opportunities, as well as struggling girls benefited more from provision of opportunities to read outside the school than did more advantaged peers. With the same teachers, reading instruction quality and limited class time, an enhanced home/community literacy environment generated greater learning. Including indicators of home literacy environment alongside skill assessments, whether large scale or small, can best inform effective support for learning and equity.