Early cognitive and linguistic profiles of different types of 7‐ to 8‐year‐old readers

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the early characteristics of four profiles of readers established in second grade (7-8 years of age): good readers, specific poor decoders, specific poor comprehenders and general poor readers. These profiles were compared retrospectively on a range of measures administered 2 years earlier, in kindergarten. These measures were based on factors known to be predictors of either decoding skills or comprehension performance. The results showed that children experiencing comprehension difficulties in second grade have early deficits in vocabulary, inferencing, working memory and morphology, while the children with decoding difficulties have limited letter knowledge and rapid naming performance. Phonological skills and verbal short-term memory appeared to be deficient in all three profiles of struggling readers. These results are discussed in terms of the early identification of at-risk children in kindergarten and the remedial programmes that could be provided to them at an early stage. HighlightsWhat is already known about this topic?• Reading implies two main components: reading and comprehension.• Each component of reading is underpinned by different predictors.• Different profiles of struggling readers with specific deficit to one component could be identified.

Inferential narrative comprehension ability of young school-age children on the autism spectrum

“…Future research should consider adding questions to better reflect the range of inferencing skills that are needed to understand the narrative (beyond those tapping into the characters’ mental states), including text-connecting, coherence, or text-based questions, for which answers can be found in-text (e.g., Cain et al, 2001 ), as well as gap-filling ( Norbury & Bishop, 2002 ) or elaborative questions, for which connections with background knowledge are required (e.g., Cain et al, 2001 ). We acknowledge inferential comprehension is a complex construct that relies on a wide range of language and cognitive skills (e.g., Dawes et al, 2018 ; Florit et al., 2011 ; Potocki et al, 2016 ; Silva & Cain, 2015 ). However, as our study was based on secondary analyses of data we were limited in the range of measures available which would have been valuable to explore as potential mechanisms, such as exposure to narratives (either classroom or speech pathology intervention), cognitive functioning (ToM, executive functioning, thinking, and reasoning), current nonverbal IQ, or more fine-grained measures of language and social-communication skills.…”

An investigation of high-proficiency L2 English speakers' oral test performance: A profiling approach

“…In addition to non-parametric tests, profiles have been presented through statistical methods such as Z-score and chisquare test. As a statistic that measures the distance from the mean, Z score has been used to represent intergroup variations of language learners' ability (Potocki et al, 2017). Students' performance on a two-part reading comprehension test were transformed to Z-score, representing their decoding and comprehending abilities, respectively.…”

Tools and Teaching Strategies for Vocabulary Assessment and Instruction: A Review

“…Moreover, the link between vocabulary and associated skills (i.e., language and literacy skills) would be bi-directional. For example, vocabulary in young French students from grade 2 seemingly predicts decoding and reading performance and conversely, performance in decoding would predict vocabulary performance (Potocki et al, 2016;Verhoeven et al, 2011). Further research is required to understand the role (causal or not (Quinn et al, 2015)), direct influence (Tunmer & Chapman, 2012) or indirect influence (Elwér et al, 2013;Ouellette & Beers, 2010), and the weight of vocabulary on associated skills.…”