Exploring factors underlying children’s acquisition and retrieval of sound–symbol association skills

Abstract

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.

Explicit but Not Implicit Memory Predicts Ultimate Attainment in the Native Language

“…Differences between groups for the digit span task are not surprising, as this measure is often included in IQ test batteries, and academic achievement is known to correlate strongly with IQ (e.g., Wechsler, 1958 ; Kaufman and Lichtenberger, 2006 ; Deary et al, 2007 ; Hogan et al, 2010 ). Likewise, the differences observed for LLAMA-B fit well with previous research showing that explicit memory for cross-modal associations correlates with reading achievement 6 and other factors related to educational success ( Vellutino et al, 1975 ; Poulsen and Elbro, 2018 ; Ehm et al, 2019 ). Thus, the differences between high and low academic attainment participants are not necessarily attributable to education as such, but could be due to other factors that are known to correlate with academic attainment 7 .…”

“…Regression lines for each group are provided for illustration purposes. factors related to educational success (Vellutino et al, 1975;Poulsen and Elbro, 2018;Ehm et al, 2019). Thus, the differences between high and low academic attainment participants are not necessarily attributable to education as such, but could be due to other factors that are known to correlate with academic attainment 7 .…”

The relationship between paired associate learning and Chinese word reading in kindergarten children

“…Previous studies have reported EF skills to be essential in PAL (Ehm et al, 2019) and in early word reading (e.g., Becker et al, 2014; Cameron et al, 2012; Chung & McBride‐Chang, 2011). For example, Ehm et al (2019) showed that WM but not inhibition control was a unique predictor of PAL, which further predicted letter knowledge in German preschoolers. During the process of PAL, children have to stay focused on the stimuli presented, hold and maintain their visual or verbal representations in mind while simultaneously working with them to establish and secure their associations.…”

“…Studies have reported significant associations between PAL, particularly visual–verbal, and word reading in typically developing children in alphabetic orthographies (e.g., Denish: Poulsen & Elbro, 2018; English: Hulme, Goetz, Gooch, Adams, & Snowling, 2007; Litt, de Jong, van Bergen, & Nation, 2013; German: Ehm et al, 2019) and also in Chinese (Chow, 2014, 2018a, 2018b; Georgiou, Liu, & Xu, 2017). However, our understanding of PAL and how it interacts with other cognitive and language skills contributing to word reading remain limited.…”

“…EF skills experience a developmental spurt in preschool years, with WM and inhibitory control developing relatively early and maturing in early childhood (Best & Miller, 2010). To date, few studies have examined the association between EF skills and PAL, and those studies only focused on verbal or phonological memory (Ehm et al, 2019; Mourgues et al, 2016; Windfuhr & Snowling, 2001). Following previous works in kindergarten children (e.g., Becker, Miao, Duncan, & McClelland, 2014; Liu, Chung, & Fung, 2019; Welsh, Nix, Blair, Bierman, & Nelson, 2010), these studies incorporated measures of WM in verbal (backward digit span) and visuospatial format (Corsi block tapping), and inhibitory control (Fruit Stroop) to assess EF construct.…”