scholarly journals Tapping to Music Predicts Literacy Skills of First-Grade Children

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Csaba Kertész ◽  
Ferenc Honbolygó

The ability to synchronise one’s movements to the sound of a regular beat has been found to be associated with children’s language and reading abilities. Sensorimotor synchronisation or tapping performance can among other factors [e.g., working memory and rapid automatized naming (RAN)] predict phonological awareness and word reading accuracy and fluency of first graders. While tapping tasks that use a simple metronome sound are more often used, applying musical stimuli has the potential advantage of being more engaging and motivating for children. In the present study, we investigated whether tapping to a metronome beat or complex musical stimuli would predict phonological awareness and reading outcomes of Hungarian 6-7-year olds (N=37). We also measured participants’ general cognitive abilities (RAN, non-verbal intelligence and verbal working memory). Our results show that phonological awareness, spelling and reading accuracy were associated with the musical tasks while reading fluency was predicted by the metronome trials. Our findings suggest that complex musical tasks should be considered when investigating this age group, as they were, in general, more effective in predicting literacy outcomes.

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMOHIRO INOUE ◽  
GEORGE K. GEORGIOU ◽  
HIROFUMI IMANAKA ◽  
TAKAKO OSHIRO ◽  
HIROYUKI KITAMURA ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTWe examined the cross-lagged relations between word reading fluency in the two orthographic systems of Japanese: phonetic (syllabic) Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. One hundred forty-two Japanese-speaking children were assessed on word reading fluency twice in Grade 1 (Times 1 and 2) and twice in Grade 2 (Times 3 and 4). Nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming were also assessed in Time 1. Results of path analysis revealed that Time 1 Hiragana fluency predicted Time 2 Kanji fluency after controlling for the cognitive skills. Time 2 Hiragana fluency did not predict Time 3 Kanji fluency or vice versa after the autoregressor was controlled, but Hiragana and Kanji fluency were reciprocally related between Times 3 and 4. These findings provide evidence for a cross-script transfer of word reading fluency across the two contrastive orthographic systems, and the first evidence of fluency in a morphographic script predicting fluency development in a phonetic script within the same language.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-123
Author(s):  
Alejandro Cuza ◽  
Lauren Miller ◽  
Adrian Pasquarella ◽  
Xi Chen

The present study examines the role of instruction in the development of reading and writing skills in Spanish as a heritage language during childhood. Sixty-six (n=66) Spanish heritage speakers in K-4th grade participated in an 18-week Spanish intervention. The curriculum included the development of phonological awareness, reading fluency and accuracy as well as vocabulary via cognate instruction. Undergraduate students majoring in Spanish conducted the intervention as part of a service-learning program. Standardized measures given to the students before and after the intervention included phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary knowledge, word reading accuracy, and word reading fluency. The treatment group was compared to a group of twenty-five children (n=25) who did not participate in the program. The two groups were matched by age and non-verbal reasoning. Results from pre and post-tests showed significant gains for the treatment group in vocabulary growth, word reading fluency and word reading accuracy. Phonological awareness developed significantly for both groups, but there was no advantage for the experimental group. Overall, the intervention was effective at promoting both Spanish language and literacy skills (Rhoades, 2009). Contextualized and explicit instruction on word reading and decoding, as well as oral language and vocabulary knowledge in Spanish, helped Spanish heritage learners develop academic language and literacy skills in their first/minority language. Furthermore, the results provide strong evidence supporting the efficacy of a service-learning program aimed at facilitating the development of literacy skills among child heritage language learners.


2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline B. Low ◽  
Linda S. Siegel

The present study examined the relative role played by three cognitive processes — phonological processing, verbal working memory, syntactic awareness — in understanding the reading comprehension performance among 884 native English (L1) speakers and 284 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) speakers in sixth-grade (mean age: 11.43 years). The performance of both groups of speakers were comparable on measures of word reading, word reading fluency, phonological awareness, phonological decoding fluency and verbal working memory. However, the ESL speakers lagged behind L1 speakers in terms of syntactic awareness. This study also emphasizes the importance of the three cognitive processes in establishing a common model of reading comprehension across English L1 and ESL reading.


Author(s):  
Joana Batalha ◽  
Maria Lobo ◽  
Antónia Estrela ◽  
Bruna Bragança

In this article, we present an assessment instrument aimed at diagnosing oral language and reading and writing skills in children attending pre-school (5 years) and the early years of primary school. The instrument was mainly designed for the school context, and it was developed in collaboration with kindergarten educators and primary teachers who participated in PIPALE - Preventive Intervention Project for Reading and Writing, a project which is integrated in the National Program for the Promotion of School Success. The instrument covers the assessment of phonological and syntactic awareness, comprehension of syntactic structures, early literacy, and reading and writing skills (word reading, word and sentence writing, text comprehension, and text production). Besides offering a detailed description of the structure and tasks of the instrument, the present study includes the results of the first implementation of this tool to a total of 495 students in pre-school, first grade and second grade. The results show significant differences between the three groups (pre-school, first grade and second grade) in phonological awareness (identification of initial syllable, initial phoneme and final rhyme) and between the younger groups and the second graders in syntactic awareness (acceptability judgement task) and early literacy skills. As for reading and writing skills, the results show better performance in reading tasks than in writing tasks, a strong significant correlation between phonological awareness and word reading and word writing, and between literacy skills and word reading and writing. We also found a milder correlation between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension, as well as text writing. These results suggest that the instrument is effective for an early diagnosis and early intervention of reading and writing skills.


Author(s):  
Malikka Begum Binte Habib Mohamed

Grade 1 responders and non-responders to an iPad-based reading intervention were evaluated on their cognitive attributes. Cognitive measures included phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal memory and statistical learning, which were correlated with a lack of response to reading interventions in previous studies (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2006). The overall research question was whether and which of the cognitive variables could differentiate treatment responders versus non-responders, since this would provide valuable information in predicting which children may be better served by different types of intervention. The intervention study was conducted as a randomized controlled design, wherein 147 children (Mage = 6.75) who were identified as at risk for reading difficulties at primary school entry were allocated to either phonics or word reading based interventions. Responders included children who attained criterion-referenced word reading and fluency and decoding accuracy and fluency scores (e.g., above grade equivalent scores or above a mean of typically developing peers), whereas nonresponders did not attain age-based scores at post-intervention compared with their preintervention scores. Four separate MANCOVA analyses were conducted to determine if nonresponders differed from their peers on any of the cognitive measures. The two groups differed only on the fluency outcomes. On the reading fluency task, non-responders varied from the other groups on their phonological awareness and verbal memory scores. For decoding fluency outcomes, responders and non-responders differed only on rapid automatized naming. Altogether, these findings do suggest differences between the groups, suggesting implications of building on cognitive skills together with language skills for children with reading difficulties.


2021 ◽  
pp. 073194872110372
Author(s):  
Elizabeth B. Meisinger ◽  
Ashley M. Breazeale ◽  
Lyle H. Davis

The purpose of this study was to examine whether group-based differences exist in word- and text-level reading in a clinical sample of students with dyslexia, and to shed light on the cognitive processes supporting these essential skills. Second- through seventh-grade students were administered a battery of standardized measures of cognitive processing skills (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming [RAN], and verbal short-term memory), word reading skills (decoding and word identification), oral text reading (fluency and comprehension), and silent text reading (fluency and comprehension). Word- and text-level reading skills were used to place students into the following groups: text fluency deficit, globally impaired, and partially remediated. Results replicated the existence of a text fluency deficit group. Reader group differences in terms of cognitive processing skills were less pronounced than expected, with only phonological awareness differentiating among them. Phonological awareness and RAN emerged as the important contributors to reading skill, though their relative contributions varied across wordand text-level measures. Together, these results point to importance of considering text-level reading processes across modality in both research and clinical contexts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
PEDRO VIANA DE FREITAS ◽  
MÁRCIA MARIA PERUZZI ELIA DA MOTA ◽  
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON

ABSTRACTWe investigated the unique effects of morphological awareness on several aspects of reading in Portuguese. We tested 132 Portuguese-speaking children in the fourth grade. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included inflectional and derivational transformations. Results indicated that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension after controlling for the effects of nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. Morphological awareness also explained unique variance in reading comprehension after adding word reading as a control. In conclusion, morphological awareness has important roles in both word reading and reading comprehension in Portuguese. Educational and clinical implications are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eunsoo Cho ◽  
Donald L. Compton ◽  
Jennifer K. Gilbert ◽  
Laura M. Steacy ◽  
Alyson A. Collins ◽  
...  

Dynamic assessment (DA) of word reading measures learning potential for early reading development by documenting the amount of assistance needed to learn how to read words with unfamiliar orthography. We examined the additive value of DA for predicting first-grade decoding and word recognition development while controlling for autoregressive effects. Additionally, we examined whether predictive validity of DA would be higher for students who have poor phonological awareness skills. First-grade students ( n = 105) were assessed on measures of word reading, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and DA in the fall and again assessed on word reading measures in the spring. A series of planned, moderated multiple regression analyses indicated that DA made a significant and unique contribution in predicting word recognition development above and beyond the autoregressor, particularly for students with poor phonological awareness skills. For these students, DA explained 3.5% of the unique variance in end-of-first-grade word recognition that was not attributable to autoregressive effect. Results suggest that DA provides an important source of individual differences in the development of word recognition skills that cannot be fully captured by merely assessing the present level of reading skills through traditional static assessment, particularly for students at risk for developing reading disabilities.


2021 ◽  
pp. 108705472110120
Author(s):  
Kelly D. Carrasco ◽  
Chi-Ching Chuang ◽  
Gail Tripp

Objective: To identify common and shared predictors of academic achievement across samples of children with ADHD. Method: Two clinically referred samples from New Zealand (1 n = 88, 82% boys; 2 n = 121, 79% boys) and two community samples from the United States (3 n = 111, 65% boys; 4 n = 114, 69% boys), completed similar diagnostic, cognitive and academic assessments. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses identified significant predictors of word reading, spelling, and math computation performance in each sample. Results: Entered after IQ, semantic language, age at testing, and verbal working memory emerged as consistent predictors of achievement across academic subjects and samples. Visual-spatial working memory contributed to variance in math performance only. Symptom severity explained limited variance. Conclusions: We recommend evaluations of children with ADHD incorporate assessments of working memory and language skills. Classroom/academic interventions should accommodate reduced working memory and address any identified language weaknesses.


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