Background: The relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading has been examined extensively, but there is still a question as to the reason for the relationship. To reduce involvement of alphanumeric and vocabulary knowledge in RAN, and to possibly reduce phonological demands, researchers have suggested using the RAN sizes that…

Fluency with skills that operate below the word level (i.e., sublexical), such as phonemic awareness and alphabetic knowledge, may ease the acquisition of decoding skills (Ritchey & Speece, 2006). Measures of sublexical fluency such as phoneme segmentation fluency (PSF), letter naming fluency (LNF), and letter sound fluency (LSF) are widely…

Reading acquisition is based on a set of preliteracy skills that lay the foundation for future reading abilities. Phonological awareness--the ability to identify and manipulate the sound units of oral language--has been reported to play a central role in reading acquisition. However, current evidence is mixed with respect to its universal…

This study investigated parents' reading-related knowledge and its association with children's reading outcomes. Forty-two parent-child dyads were assessed when children were in Kindergarten and 39 of the children were followed the subsequent year. Reading measures were administered in Kindergarten. In Grade 1, children received reading and…

The present longitudinal study investigated the role of spelling as a bridge between various reading-related predictors and English word reading in Chinese children learning English as a Second Language (ESL). One hundred and forty-one 5-year-old kindergarten children from Hong Kong, whose first language (L1) was Cantonese and second language (L2)…

During the past 2 decades, many respective reading processes have been delineated, and much is now known about reading acquisition in children. Most of this research has been completed using English-dominant subjects. As such, the literature focuses on an opaque orthography and aspects of learning to read in this context. In this study, predictors…