This study aimed to investigate if a universal 24-week oral language and emergent literacy programme delivered to students in the first year of schooling positively impacts reading performance 2 years post intervention. Eighty-nine participants were second grade students from three primary schools in low socio-economic status areas. Using a…

Modern behavior-genetic studies of twins in the United States, Australia, Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom show that genes account for most of the variance in children's reading ability by the end of the 1st year of formal reading instruction. Strong genetic influence continues across the grades, though the relevant genes vary for reading words…

Students living in disadvantaged contexts and whose second language is English (ESL) are at risk of not succeeding in school mathematics. It has been internationally recognised that students' socioeconomic background and their achievements in mathematics is more pronounced for Australian students (Thomson et al. 2011). This gap is even more…

"Fast ForWord"[R] is a computer-based reading program intended to help students develop and strengthen the cognitive skills necessary for successful reading and learning. The program, which is designed to be used 30-100 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 4-16 weeks, includes three series. The "Fast ForWord[R] Language" series…

Genetic and environmental relations between vocabulary and reading skills were explored longitudinally from preschool through Grades 2 and 4. At preschool there were strong shared-environment and weak genetic influences on both vocabulary and print knowledge but substantial differences in their source. Separation of etiology for vocabulary and…

"Fast ForWord"[R] is a computer-based reading program intended to help students develop and strengthen the cognitive skills necessary for successful reading and learning. The program, which is designed to be used 30 to 100 minutes a day, five days a week, for 4 to 16 weeks, includes two components. The first component aims to build…

Although research has established that phonological awareness is a predictor of future reading skill, the effects of variant vs. contiguous presentations of grapheme-phoneme correspondences as part of a teaching program have not been examined. A variant presentation is one in which there is a mismatch between the letter and sound or sound and…

During the school years, psychological test norms may be indexed by age or by grade. A number of studies have shown that using age-based norms appears to produce biases associated with grade assignment. Cahan and Cohen [Child Dev. 60 (1989) 1239-1249] showed that the effect of one grade was over twice the effect of 1 year of age for most verbal…