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This study investigated the effect of the digital Down Syndrome LanguagePlus (DSL+) intervention on vocabulary outcomes through a school-delivered randomized controlled trial. A national sample of first graders with Down syndrome from 91 schools was allocated to an intervention group ( n = 50), which received daily intervention for 15 weeks, or a business-as-usual control group ( n = 53). The intervention involved picture book sharing and structured tasks and was organized as one-to-one, small-group, and full-class lessons. Children in the intervention group made greater gains than children in the control group in expressive vocabulary breadth ( d = .429, CI [.160, .699]) and receptive vocabulary breadth ( d = .447, CI [.193, .700]). The outcomes indicate that the novel DSL+ intervention is an effective intervention to increase trained vocabulary among first graders with Down syndrome, and it takes only 15 minutes of effort 5 days a week.

The utility of homework and its impact on academic achievement has been an ongoing debate for more than 100 years. To date, there is no rigorous experimental research to show whether, and the extent to which, variations in the amount of homework assigned can impact the academic performance of elementary school students. In this study, 440 second-grade students were randomly distributed in 3 groups within the classes they attended. Each group received different amounts of homework in writing and math for 20 days. The results showed a significant immediate effect of homework quantity on writing competency (but not on math competency). The writing homework effects were sustained 4 months later, but only for the group that had allocated a moderate amount of homework to writing skills practice. This study shows that the additional opportunities for practice offered by homework can have differential short-term and medium-term effects on the academic achievement of elementary school students and supports the assignment of a moderate amount of writing homework at this age.

The simple view of reading proposes that the development of reading comprehension in early elementary school is best predicted by children’s fluent decoding and oral language skills. Recent studies challenge this view and suggest that executive functions should also be included in this theoretical model; however, the empirical evidence is not strong enough to clearly support or refute this hypothesis. In this short-term longitudinal study, we used latent variables to test whether executive functions have direct effects on the development of reading comprehension in 184 Romanian second graders, beyond fluent decoding and oral language skills. The results indicated that the initial stages of reading comprehension were associated with executive functions, but only the language skills could independently predict the development of reading comprehension. Our findings show that executive functions do not have a significant direct effect on the development of reading comprehension in early readers beyond fluent decoding and oral language skills in languages with transparent orthography. The results also suggest that once children learn to decode well, their language skills (and not their executive functions) have a strong effect on the development of reading comprehension. Therefore, reading interventions in elementary school should stress on the development of oral language skills.

This paper describes a randomised control trial (RCT) of a small group intervention targeting articulatory consciousness in first graders with a reading delay (control condition: n = 57, intervention condition: n = 64). The programme in the intervention condition consisted of basic decoding and spelling tasks using articulatory cards to symbolise speech sounds. Training took place four times per week for five weeks. The control condition received “business as usual”. The results show that the children in the intervention condition learned to use the articulatory symbols, but there were no effects of the intervention on reading and phonological awareness measures. Also, there was no relationship shown between initial phonological awareness skills and gains, or lack thereof, from the intervention.

Background There is increasing recognition of the contribution of morphological skills to the development of reading fluency. However, theoretical models and recent research raise questions about how different language skills influence reading development. Methods The present study was designed to follow the reading development of a large sample of Norwegian children (N = 323) from preschool to Grade 9, assessing their performance on a wide range of language‐related and reading skills including morphological awareness. We employed confirmatory factor analyses of the cognitive, linguistic and reading variables prior to modelling the contribution of the preschool language variables to reading comprehension in Grades 1, 2 and 9. Results Preschool measures of phonological, morphological and semantic skills were best represented by a single language latent variable. Reading in Grades 1 and 2, assessed by measures of both decoding and comprehension, was also best represented by a single latent variable. Preschool language skills have long‐range direct and indirect effects on the development of reading comprehension. Overall, preschool language abilities accounted for 69.2% of the variance in reading comprehension 9 years later. Conclusions The results demonstrate the powerful influence of early language on later reading and suggest that language intervention programmes, combining phonological, morphological and semantic activities, may help to reduce the incidence of reading problems.

This chapter focuses on the processes involved in the development of children’s decoding skills: the ability to translate printed words into a speech code, typically assessed by the accuracy and speed of reading aloud. If children struggle in developing this ability, they are often characterized as having dyslexia, but since decoding skills are normally distributed in the population, the cut-off for this diagnosis is somewhat arbitrary (Melby-Lervåg et al. 2012). During the first two years of school, the main aim for children is to develop accurate and fluent early reading abilities that will lay the foundation for the main goal of reading – to be able to extract meaning from text. Thus, though insufficient by itself, efficient word reading is, in turn, a necessary condition for the development of reading comprehension. Research on the foundations of learning to read has burgeoned in the last twenty-five years, with important theoretical and practical consequences.

Background Stuttering, or stammering as it is referred to in some countries, affects a child's ability to speak fluently. It is a common communication disorder, affecting 11% of children by four years of age. Stuttering can be characterized by sound, part word or whole word repetitions, sound prolongations, or blocking of sounds or airflow. Moments of stuttering can also be accompanied by non‐verbal behaviours, including visible tension in the speaker's face, eye blinks or head nods. Stuttering can also negatively affect behavioural, social and emotional functioning. Objectives Primary objective To assess the immediate and long‐term effects of non‐pharmacological interventions for stuttering on speech outcomes, communication attitudes, quality of life and potential adverse effects in children aged six years and younger. Secondary objective To describe the relationship between intervention effects and participant characteristics (i.e. child age, IQ, severity, sex and time since stuttering onset) at pretest. Search methods We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, nine other databases and two trial registers on 16 September 2020, and Open Grey on 20 October 2020. There were no limits in regards to language, year of publication or type of publication. We also searched the reference lists of included studies and requested data on unpublished trials from authors of published studies. We handsearched conference proceedings and programmes from relevant conferences. Selection criteria We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi‐RCTs that assessed non‐pharmacological interventions for stuttering in young children aged six years and younger. Eligible comparators were no intervention, wait list or management as usual. Data collection and analysis We used standard methodological procedures expected by Cochrane. Main results We identified four eligible RCTs, all of which compared the Lidcombe Program to a wait‐list control group. In total, 151 children aged between two and six years participated in the four included studies. In the Lidcombe Program, the parent and their child visit a speech and language therapist (SLT) in a clinic. One study conducted clinic visits by telephone. In each clinic visit, parents were taught how to conduct treatment at home. Two studies took place in Australia, one in New Zealand and one in Germany. Two studies were conducted for nine months, one for 16 weeks and one for 12 weeks. The frequency of clinic visits and practice sessions at home varied within the programme. One study was partially funded by the Rotary Club, Wiesbaden, Germany; and one was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. One study did not report funding sources and another reported that they did not receive any funding for the trial. All four studies reported the outcome of stuttering frequency. One study also reported on speech efficiency, defined as articulation rate. No studies reported the other predetermined outcomes of this review, namely stuttering severity; communication attitudes; emotional, cognitive or psychosocial domains; or adverse effects. The Lidcombe Program resulted in a lower stuttering frequency percentage syllables stuttered (% SS) than a wait‐list control group at post‐test, 12 weeks, 16 weeks and nine months postrandomization (mean difference (MD) −2.16, 95% confidence interval (CI) −3.48 to −0.84, 4 studies, 151 participants; P = 0.001; very low‐certainty evidence). However, as the Lidcombe Program is designed to take one to two years to complete, none of the participants in these studies had finished the complete intervention programme at any of the data collection points. We assessed stuttering frequency to have a high risk of overall bias due to high risk of bias in at least one domain within three of four included studies, and to have some concern of overall bias in the fourth, due to some concern in at least one domain. We found moderate‐certainty evidence from one study showing that the Lidcombe Program may increase speech efficiency in young children. Only one study reported outcomes at long‐term follow‐up. The long‐term effect of intervention could not be summarized, as the results for most of the children in the control group were missing. However, a within‐group comparison was performed between the mean % SS at randomization and the mean % SS at the time of extended follow‐up, and showed a significant reduction in frequency of stuttering. Authors' conclusions This systematic review indicates that the Lidcombe Program may result in lower stuttering frequency and higher speech efficiency than a wait‐list control group in children aged up to six years at post‐test. However, these results should be interpreted with caution due to the very low and moderate certainty of the evidence and the high risk of bias identified in the included studies. Thus, there is a need for further studies from independent researchers, to evaluate the immediate and long‐term effects of other non‐pharmacological interventions for stuttering compared to no intervention or a wait‐list control group.

The present study investigated the moderating role of orthographic consistency on the development of reading comprehension in four language groups (English, n = 179; Spanish, n = 188; Czech, n = 135; Slovak, n = 194) from kindergarten to Grade 2. In all languages, early variations in phoneme awareness/letter knowledge, rapid automatised naming, and emerging decoding skills, but not oral language, predicted variations in decoding skills at the end of Grade 1; these in turn predicted reading comprehension in Grade 2. For the three consistent orthographies (Spanish, Slovak, and Czech), kindergarten language skills were another significant predictor of Grade 2 reading comprehension. This effect was absent in the English sample, where variations in decoding skills were a more powerful predictor. These results provide the first longitudinal evidence for effects of orthographic consistency on the development of reading comprehension and provide support for the simple view of reading.

Difficulties with learning mathematics and learning to read have for a long time been categorised into diagnostic categories like dyscalculia and dyslexia. This categorization has been based on ideas that some core deficits underlie and cause the difficulties. However, no clear and sufficient core deficit has been found for these difficulties and no qualitative differences has been identified distinguishing those assigned to the diagnoses from people not assigned to the diagnoses - thus, the diagnostic cut-offs are arbitrary. In addition, several of the factors associated with one disorder are also associated with other disorders. These issues favour a multi-factored view of the diagnoses that have implication for both clinical practice and research.

Background It is well established that oral language skills provide a critical foundation for formal education. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) programme in ameliorating language difficulties in the first year of school when delivered at scale. Methods We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) in 193 primary schools (containing 238 Reception classrooms). Schools were randomly allocated to either a 20‐week oral language intervention or a business‐as‐usual control group. All classes (N = 5,879 children) in participating schools were screened by school staff using an automated App to assess children’s oral language skills. Screening identified 1,173 children as eligible for language intervention: schools containing 571 of these children were allocated to the control group and 569 to the intervention group. Results Children receiving the NELI programme made significantly larger gains than the business‐as‐usual control group on a latent variable reflecting standardized measures of language ability (d = .26) and on the school‐administered automated assessment of receptive and expressive language skills (d = .32). The effects of intervention did not vary as a function of home language background or gender. Conclusions This study provides strong evidence for the effectiveness of a school‐based language intervention programme (NELI) delivered at scale. These findings demonstrate that language difficulties can be identified by school‐based testing and ameliorated by a TA delivered intervention; this has important implications for educational and social policy.

There is a relationship between reading and math skills, as well as comorbidity between reading and math disorders. A mutual foundation for this comorbidity could be that the quality of phonological representations is important for both early reading and arithmetic. In this study, we examine this hypothesis in a sample traced longitudinally from preschool to first grade (N = 259). The results show that phonological awareness does not explain development in arithmetic, but that there is an indirect effect between phoneme awareness in preschool and arithmetic in first grade via phoneme awareness in first grade. This effect is, however, weak and restricted to verbal arithmetic and not arithmetic fluency. This finding is only partly in line with other studies, and a reason could be that this study more strongly controls for confounders and previous skills than other studies.

This study evaluates the effect of an intervention whose aim is to make articulatory consciousness a tool in decoding and spelling. The sample comprises 11 students with severe dyslexia (2 SD below the mean pseudoword scores), and the intervention programme consists of 32 individual sessions over 8 weeks. The study applies a multiple baseline/probe design with five baseline tests that correspond to a control condition, eight tests during the intervention and five post-intervention tests. On average, the results show significant improvement in all reading and spelling outcomes. However, there were also significant effects on an irrelevant control task (the pegboard test), perhaps indicating testing effects on the dependent variables, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions from the study. Consequently, testing the intervention in randomised trials of children with severe dyslexia is recommended to draw more firm conclusions about its efficacy for this group. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11881-021-00225-1.

The most critical issue in our field is to understand the causes of the disorders we study. What genetic and environmental risk factors result in some children developing autism, and others depression? I discussed the issue of causation in an earlier editorial (Lervag, 2019) and anticipated that 'we will see many more studies in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (JCPP) testing causal relationships'. My prediction is nicely borne out by studies in the current issue of the journal.

Oral language is crucial for social interaction and for learning in the classroom; it also provides the foundation for reading comprehension. It follows that children with language difficulties are at high risk of educational failure. Recently, a number of studies have demonstrated that it is possible to produce small but significant improvements in children’s oral language through targeted language interventions ( d = 0.16) and, furthermore, that studies with high-quality implementation show larger effects ( d = 0.24). There is also evidence that effects of language intervention can generalize to produce improvements in reading comprehension. Although further research examining the long-term effects of language interventions are needed, current findings have important implications for educational policy and practice.

This study examined the relationship between knowledge of academic vocabulary and reading comprehension in data contributed by 5855 middle school students. Each student completed an academic vocabulary assessment, a standardized reading comprehension test, and one of four types of novel vocabulary-depth measures. Multiword expressions examined students’ abilities to complete formulaic phrases. Topical associates items required students to identify a target word that was topically related to three others. The hypernyms task required students to identify the superordinate for each target word. The definitions task asked students to choose the definition of the target word. We modeled the relationship between performance on the reading comprehension task and each of the four types of assessments using a residual factors approach (Bentler & Satorra, 2000) with latent variables. Even though each depth measure tested exactly the same sets of words, we found that these measures had a differential impact on reading comprehension, with the definitions task explaining the largest portion of variance in reading comprehension beyond overall academic vocabulary. The knowledge of multiword expressions and topical associates—but not of hypernyms—also explained unique variance in reading comprehension even when controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge.

Background Oral language skills are a critical foundation for literacy and more generally for educational success. The current study shows that oral language skills can be improved by providing suitable additional help to children with language difficulties in the early stages of formal education. Methods We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 394 children in England, comparing a 30‐week oral language intervention programme starting in nursery (N = 132) with a 20‐week version of the same programme starting in Reception (N = 133). The intervention groups were compared to an untreated waiting control group (N = 129). The programmes were delivered by trained teaching assistants (TAs) working in the children's schools/nurseries. All testers were blind to group allocation. Results Both the 20‐ and 30‐week programmes produced improvements on primary outcome measures of oral language skill compared to the untreated control group. Effect sizes were small to moderate (20‐week programme: d = .21; 30‐week programme: d = .30) immediately following the intervention and were maintained at follow‐up 6 months later. The difference in improvement between the 20‐week and 30‐week programmes was not statistically significant. Neither programme produced statistically significant improvements in children's early word reading or reading comprehension skills (secondary outcome measures). Conclusions This study provides further evidence that oral language interventions can be delivered successfully by trained TAs to children with oral language difficulties in nursery and Reception classes. The methods evaluated have potentially important policy implications for early education.

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: Primary objective To assess the immediate and long‐term effects of non‐pharmacological interventions for stuttering on speech outcomes in children aged between birth and six years. Secondary objective To describe the relationship between intervention effects and participant characteristics (i.e. child age, child’s communication attitudes and the impact stuttering has on the child’s QoL).

We evaluated the effect of morphological awareness training delivered in preschool (8 months before school entry) on reading ability at the end of grade 1 and 5 years later (in Grade 6). In preschool, one group of children received morphological awareness training, while a second group received phonological awareness training. A control group followed the ordinary preschool curriculum. The comparison between each training condition and the control condition is quasi experimental, whereas the comparison between the morphological and phonological treatments is randomized at group level. In Grade 1 children in the morphological awareness training group had significantly higher scores than children in the control group on both word reading and text reading measures, but no differences were found between the experimental groups. In Grade 6 children in the morphological awareness training group had significantly higher scores compared with the control group on a latent measure of reading comprehension, whereas the children in the phonological awareness training group did not differ from the controls; although the experimental groups did not differ significantly from each other. The results suggest that early training in morphological awareness can have long-term effects on children’s literacy skills.

Numerosity discrimination tasks (judging which of two random dot arrays contains the larger number) have been widely used as a measure of the efficiency of an approximate number system (ANS) and are a correlate of early arithmetic skills. Recently, it has been suggested that the relationship between numerosity discrimination and arithmetic is explained by inhibition rather than the ANS. We assessed this hypothesis in a study of 496 children (mean age = 81.23 months) using numerosity discrimination tasks that manipulated the congruency between surface area and numerosity. Numerosity discrimination for incongruent arrays (which are postulated to require inhibition due to a conflict between judgments based on surface area rather than numerosity) was more difficult than that for congruent arrays. However, all numerosity discrimination tasks showed substantial correlations with each other and correlated with arithmetic. A latent variable path model showed that a general numerosity judgment factor correlated with arithmetic even after controlling for a measure of response inhibition. In contrast, numerosity discrimination for incongruent arrays showed no unique relationship with arithmetic ability. Our results do not support the view that the relationship between numerosity discrimination and arithmetic is largely attributable to inhibition; rather, they are consistent with the view that numerosity discrimination tasks tap the operation of an ANS.

The desire to seek explanations and causal patterns is deeply embedded in human nature. This has long been acknowledged, and as early as 29 BC Virgil stated "Lucky is he who has been able to understand the causes of things" (Pearl & Mackenzie, 2018). Yet still, the science of causality is quite new, and has developed much more recently than for instance probability and significance testing (Pearl, 2018). However, during the last 10-15 years a new focus on causal inference has affected how scientists think in most empirical fields in a way that some even argue represents a causal revolution (Pearl, 2018). The increased understanding of the logic behind causal reasoning has also affected how we study psychopathological development. It is now well acknowledged that the complexity of development and developmental disorders means we require explanations on different levels, using different research designs. The articles in this issue illustrate this in various ways.

International assessments show that 20% of adolescents cannot read simple texts with understanding. Despite this, research has focused on early reading in childhood and skilled reading in adulthood, neglecting reading development during adolescence. We report a longitudinal study assessing reading and vocabulary development at 12, 13 and 14 years in a sample of 210 adolescents who were unselected for ability. Word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, reading comprehension, receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary were assessed using standardized assessments. Latent variable models showed consistent rank order amongst individuals (high stability), significant progress over time, and evidence that achievement gaps between the least and most able adolescents were narrowing. Oral vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension were best conceptualized as indices of a common language construct. Low levels of reading proficiency were also observed in a substantial proportion of this sample, underlining the importance of providing ongoing reading and language support during adolescence.

Learning to read efficiently is one of the main skills that children has to learn in school and is important in order to functioning well in modern society. Even if children's reading skills seem to be related to their socioeconomic status, only a few studies have examined how SES is related to the development of reading skills in children facing severe poverty. This study traced 322 Roma children facing severe poverty from 7 through 9 years and compared them with an unselected sample of 178 Romanian non-Roma children. The Roma children had both poorer initial reading and a slower growth of their reading skills. In contrast to previous studies, SES did explain growth in reading skills after controlling for other well-known cognitive and linguistic predictors of reading. Among the Roma children, the effects of SES on reading growth were partly mediated by school absence. Thus, interventions directed at Roma children facing severe poverty need to target both the quality of reading instruction and broader aspects of these children's lives.

In this randomized trial study, the authors examined the efficacy of a practitioner partnership language intervention addressing oral language learning (expressive and receptive) in young language‐minority learners from multiple‐language groups in Norway. Resource teachers in 16 elementary schools implemented the intervention in the first and second grades, delivering a total of 64 thirty‐minute sessions over eight consecutive weeks. With a mean age of 6 years 3.34 months, 137 students were randomly allocated to an intervention group or a waiting‐list control group, with the latter group receiving the intervention after posttest 1. Five assessments of oral language skills were conducted before the intervention, immediately following it, and four months later. The intervention group showed significant improvements in various oral language skills compared with the waiting‐list control group. There were no significant differences between the groups at the four‐month follow‐up when the waiting‐list control group received the intervention. The program was successful in enhancing oral language skills in young language‐minority learners.

The two major determinants of reading comprehension are language comprehension and decoding, but prior studies of the development of reading comprehension from an early age show inconsistent results. To clarify these inconsistencies we report a 6-year longitudinal study (starting at Age 4 years) where we control for measurement error and track the development and interrelationships between a range of predictors of reading comprehension (language, decoding, and cognitive skills). We found two main pathways to reading comprehension: a highly stable language comprehension pathway (reflecting variations in vocabulary, listening comprehension, grammar, and verbal working memory) and a less stable code-related pathway (reflecting variations in phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid automatized naming). Early language comprehension at Age 4 years is strongly related to code-related predictors (phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming), and influences decoding indirectly through these constructs. Early oral language skills predicted initial levels of reading comprehension and its growth between the ages of 7 and 9 years. Strikingly, language comprehension and decoding, together with their interaction and curvilinear effects, explain almost all (99.7%) of the variance in reading comprehension skills at 7 years of age. Our study adds to prior knowledge in several important ways and provides strong support for an elaborated version of the simple view of reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

There is increasing interest in the role that pattern understanding may play in the development of arithmetic and reading skills. However, longitudinal studies are rare and typically do not control for other predictors which contribute to development in these domains. This large-scale longitudinal study examined the extent to which pattern understanding is a unique predictor of reading and arithmetic, after controlling for a range of theoretically important skills. We assessed a large sample of 5-year old children (N = 569) in the first few months of school on measures of reading, arithmetic, naming speed, number knowledge, counting, non-symbolic magnitude, executive function, oral language, and non-verbal IQ. Children completed alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric pattern understanding tasks six months later. Reading and arithmetic skills were assessed again 12 months after the initial assessment. Latent variable path models showed that pattern understanding predicted significant additional variance in both reading and arithmetic after controlling for a range of other variables. Pattern understanding was in turn predicted by executive function, which indirectly predicted both reading and arithmetic. Thus, we find support for a role of domain general skills (executive function and pattern understanding) as shared predictors of both reading and arithmetic.

This study examined the relationship between speech difficulties at school entry and problems learning to read. We test the hypothesis that phonological skills explain the relationship between speech and reading difficulties. Speech skills were assessed in a large ( N = 569) unselected sample of 5-year old children just after school entry. Children also completed a wide range of tasks measuring oral language (expressive vocabulary, receptive grammar and listening comprehension), reading and reading-related skills (single word reading, letter-sound knowledge, phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming) and non-verbal IQ. Assessments were repeated six months later. Speech difficulties were identified in 6.88% of children. Speech difficulties were associated with poorer non-verbal IQ, oral language and reading relative to children without speech difficulties. A mediation model demonstrated that the relationship between speech difficulties and later reading was entirely mediated by phoneme awareness. Speech difficulties at school entry are related to problems in acquiring phoneme awareness which in turn are associated with problems in learning to read. Clinically, our results imply that any child who has a speech difficulty at school entry should be assessed and monitored for broader oral language difficulties and for delays in reading development with a view to providing early intervention to ameliorate such difficulties.

Second-language learners display poorer general language skills in the language used at school than their monolingual peers, which is a concern because general language skills (vocabulary, grammar, language expression, and comprehension) provide the foundation for later academic success. In a randomized controlled trial, we examined the efficacy of an intervention to improve second-language learners' general language skills in their second language. One hundred and fifteen children (mean age = 5.5 years) were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual control group or to an 18-week intervention program conducted by kindergarten teachers during the last semester of kindergarten. The children were assessed at pre-intervention, post-intervention and a seven-month follow-up. The children in the treatment group demonstrated significant improvements on a custom measure of taught vocabulary. The language intervention program also produced effects that generalized to standardized measures reflecting express...

screening Two members of the review team will independently screen candidate studies (duplicate decisions). If a large number of studies are involved, a cutoff will be made where the two authors will double screen e.g. 30% of the abstracts in order to establish reliability at this stage. If the Cohen’s kappa inter-rater reliability for inclusion or exclusion, as indicated by Cohen’s kappa, is satisfactory (above .80), the remaining references will be split in half and screened by either the first or second coder. If the inter-rater reliability is below .80 the two screeners will go through their conflicts and agree on the criteria’s before continuing screening. If necessary, the coding sheets will be revised.

Speech perception deficits are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises learning to read is scant. We assessed the hypothesis that phonological skills, specifically phoneme awareness and RAN, mediate the relationship between speech perception and reading. We assessed longitudinal predictive relationships between categorical speech perception, phoneme awareness, RAN, language, attention and reading at ages 5½ and 6½ years in 237 children many of whom were at high risk of reading difficulties. Speech perception at 5½ years correlated with language, attention, phoneme awareness and RAN concurrently and was a predictor of reading at 6½ years. There was no significant indirect effect of speech perception on reading via phoneme awareness, suggesting that its effects are separable from those of phoneme awareness. Children classified with dyslexia at 8 years had poorer speech perception than age‐controls at 5½ years and children with language disorders (with or without dyslexia) had more severe difficulties with both speech perception and attention control. Categorical speech perception tasks tap factors extraneous to perception, including decision‐making skills. Further longitudinal studies are needed to unravel the complex relationships between categorical speech perception tasks and measures of reading and language and attention. Funding Information: Wellcome Trust. Grant Number: WT082032MA

This study investigates the longitudinal predictors of the development of Chinese word reading skills and potential bidirectional relationships between Chinese word reading and oral language skills. We examine, in a 2-year longitudinal study, a wide range of theoretically important predictors (phonological awareness, tone awareness, morphological awareness, visual skills, rapid automatized naming (RAN), Pinyin knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge) of reading in 143 primary-school children living in mainland China. Initial levels of reading were predicted by vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness and visual discrimination skills. Only initial reading levels predicted growth in reading. Initial reading also predicted growth in vocabulary knowledge and morphological construction. This pattern demonstrates that the early stages of learning to read in Chinese places demands on semantic (vocabulary) and visual skills in addition to phonological skills. Furthermore, early levels of word reading predict the later growth of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness suggesting that the development of these oral language skills is facilitated by learning to read.

While we know that interventions targeting oral language can be effective, little is known about what drives these effects. In this study, we examine whether gains in transfer measures are mediated through the specific words that are trained in a language intervention. Based on a large‐scale randomized controlled trial of language intervention in 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children, latent mediation models were used to disentangle oral language gains in transfer measures. The results first showed that the effects of the language intervention and the transfer effects are generated through expressive rather than receptive measures of language. Second, we found that the effects of the intervention on intermediate transfer measures of language were mediated through the ability to define the trained words. Third, and critically, for far transfer measures that did not contain any of the trained words, the effects were mediated through the trained words. The findings relate to theories of transfer and support the idea that far transfer is possible, at least within the same domain. In addition, it seems that effects on receptive language skills are difficult to obtain and that what is improved is instead the children's ability to express themselves and use procedures to explain words. Thus, to optimize intervention effects, future studies should focus on expressive language.

Letter knowledge is considered an important cognitive foundation for learning to read. The underlying mechanisms of the association between letter knowledge and reading skills are, however, not fully understood. Acquiring letter knowledge depends on the ability to learn and retrieve sound–symbol pairings. In the current study, this process was explored by setting preschool children’s (N = 242, mean age = 5.57 years) performance in the acquisition and retrieval of a paired associate learning (PAL) task in relation to their letter knowledge as well as to their performance in tasks assessing precursors of reading skills (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological short-term memory, backward recall, and response inhibition). Multiple regression analyses revealed that performance in the acquisition of the PAL task was significantly associated with phonological awareness and backward recall, whereas performance in the retrieval of the PAL task was significantly associated with rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, and backward recall. Moreover, PAL proved to be mediating the relation between reading precursors and letter knowledge. Together, these findings indicate that the acquisition of letter knowledge may depend on a visual–verbal associative learning mechanism and that different factors contribute to the acquisition and retrieval of such visual–verbal associations.