Gender differences in reading seem to increase throughout schooling and then decrease or even disappear with age, but the reasons for this are unclear. In this study, we explore whether differences in the way 'reading literacy' is operationalised can add to our understanding of varying gender differences in international large-scale surveys. We first compare the impact of gender on reading literacy in PIRLS 2011 (10-year-olds), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 (15-year-olds) and Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2012 (16-24-year-olds), respectively, across the Nordic countries. Then we compare how reading literacy is operationalised in those surveys. We find similar patterns of gender differences across the Nordic countries, with the largest effect sizes in PISA and the smallest in PIAAC. Further, even though the three surveys define reading literacy in similar ways, they operationalise and assess that construct differently. The magnitude of the observed gender differences appears to be associated with certain assessment features including text type, item format, aspects of reading and implementation.

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Research has linked family risk (FR) of reading difficulties (RD) with children's difficulties in emergent literacy development. This study is the first to apply parents' self‐report of RD as a proxy for FR in a large sample (n = 1171) in order to test group differences in children's emergent literacy. Emergent literacy, the home literacy environment and children's interest in literacy and letters were compared across different groups of FR children around the school entry. The FR children performed lower in emergent literacy compared with not‐FR children. Furthermore, when comparing FR children with one parent reporting RD and children with both parents reporting RD, moderate group differences were found in Emergent Literacy. Finally, parents' self‐report of RD was a significant contributor of emergent literacy after controlling for the home literacy environment, children's gender, their interest in literacy and letters, months in kindergarten, vocabulary and parents' education. Our findings suggest that schools should monitor the reading development of children with parents self‐reporting RD closely – especially if both parents self‐report RD. © 2017 The Authors. Dyslexia published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

It is well established that emergent literacy is a strong predictor of later reading difficulties, and that the home literacy environment plays an important role in the development of children's preschool emergent literacy and oral language. Furthermore, reading difficulties runs in families and children with a family risk of reading difficulties tend to show delays in emergent literacy and might experience a less advantageous home literacy environment. This study examined whether family risk predicts children's second-grade reading difficulties in a multifactorial model including both emergent literacy and environmental protective factors such as home literacy environment and parental level of education. Children were assessed for emergent literacy at the beginning of first grade, and were identified as having reading difficulties at the end of second grade if they performed below the national threshold in at least three of the subtests in reading and spelling. The multifactorial model suggested that children with family risk showed reading difficulties that could not be explained in terms of individual differences in emergent literacy, gender, interest in literacy, years in kindergarten, home literacy environment or parental education level. These findings highlight the advantages of using multifactorial models of reading difficulties that encompass different domains of genetic, cognitive-based and environmental factors. In sum, not only did we find family risk is associated with children's literacy outcomes after 2 years of formal reading instruction, but we also identified possible modifiable factors that may benefit from interventions and lessen the likelihood of developing reading difficulties.

Rhythm plays an organisational role in the prosody and phonology of language, and children with literacy difficulties have been found to demonstrate poor rhythmic perception. This study explored whether students’ performance on a simple rhythm task at school entry could serve as a predictor of whether they would face difficulties in word reading and spelling at the end of grade 1. The participants were 479 Norwegian 6-year-old first graders randomized as controls in the longitudinal RCT on track (n = 1171). Rhythmic timing and pre-reading skills were tested individually at school entry on a digital tablet. On the rhythm task, the students were told to tap a drum appearing on the screen to two different rhythms (2 Hz paced and 1.5 Hz paced). Children’s responses were recorded as they tapped on the screen with their index finger. Significant group differences were found in rhythm tapping ability measured at school entry, when groups were defined upon whether children went on to score above or below the 20th percentile reading and spelling thresholds in national assessment tests at the end of grade one. Inclusion of the school-entry rhythmic tapping measure into a model of classification accuracy for above or below threshold reading and spelling improved accuracy of classification by 6.2 and 9.2% respectively. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11145-017-9782-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.