Predicting Literacy Skills at 8 Years From Preschool Language Trajectories: A Population-Based Cohort Study

Abstract

Purpose This article explored the predictive values of three main language delay (LD) trajectories (i.e., persistent, late onset, and transient) across 3–5 years on poor literacy at 8 years. Additionally, the effect of gender was assessed, using both gender-neutral and gender-specific thresholds. Method The data comprised mother-reported questionnaire data for 8,371 children in the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study. Analyses were conducted using binary logistic regression in SPSS to make predictions about risk. Results LD reported at preschool age was associated with excess risk of poor literacy at 8 years with odds ratios ranging from 3.19 to 9.75 dependent on trajectory, persistent LD being the strongest predictor. The odds ratio of transient LD was similar to that of late-onset LD. Gender was not found to play an important role in the association between oral language and literacy, as the gender difference disappeared when gender-specific deficit criterion was used. Conclusion Our study supports the longitudinal association between preschool oral language and school-aged literacy skills and highlights the importance of different LD trajectories across preschool ages in predicting later literacy. Furthermore, practitioners are recommended to consider gender-specific cutoffs in relation to language and literacy measures.

Parental Reports of Preschoolers' Lexical and Syntactic Development: Validation of the CDI-III for European Portuguese

“…Evidence of validity based on test-criterion relationships was collected by analyzing the effects of the child's gender, maternal education, and birth order on the CDI-III-PT scores. No gender differences were found in any of the two subscales, supporting the findings of other studies that suggest that boys catch up to girls' language abilities in preschool years (Altinkaynak, 2019;Fung et al, 2019;Jin et al, 2020;van der Wilt et al, 2020). Significant effects were found for maternal education in both subscales, a result which is also congruent with the findings of previous research in early development (Umek et al, 2006;Weigel et al, 2006;Fenson et al, 2007;Richels et al, 2013;Andonova, 2015;Gonzalez et al, 2017;Cadime et al, 2018;Farley and Piasta, 2020).…”

“…However, some studies with toddlers suggest that, as they approach 3;0, there is a tendency for boys to catch up in terms of expressive language (Simonsen et al, 2014). The results of other studies with preschool children, with ages ranging approximately between 3;0 and 6;0, seem to confirm that this gender gap decreases as children grow older: some studies with preschoolers show only small differences favoring girls (Jin et al, 2020;van der Wilt et al, 2020), and others do not show any differences (Altinkaynak, 2019;Fung et al, 2019).…”

Kindergarten screening tools filled out by parents and teachers targeting dyslexia. Predictions and developmental trajectories from age 5 to age 15 years

“…Developmental trajectories in dyslexia can be analysed in several ways, for instance, according to psychological health (Jordan & Dyer, 2017), according to intellectual abilities (Kuppen & Goswami, 2016) or according to protective and compensatory mechanisms (Yu, Zuk, & Gaab, 2018).In line with several other studies (see, i.e., Jin et al, 2020;Peng et al, 2019;Snowling et al, 2019), the focus of this study is on literacy development as depicted by the three stages by analysing close caregivers' evaluation of their children's literacy development through kindergarten to their last year of compulsory school when they were 15 years old.…”

Associations Between Language Difficulties, Peer Victimization, and Bully Perpetration From 3 Through 8 Years of Age: Results From a Population-Based Study

“…In MoBa, measures of communication and motor skills are included. ASQ has been used in previous studies investigating young children with language difficulties (Jin et al, 2020;Zambrana et al, 2014). The validity of ASQ has been demonstrated in a Norwegian context (Richter & Janson, 2007).…”

“…Previous studies have found that approximately 7%-10% of children were identified as having language difficulties (Hollund-Møllerhaug, 2010;Norbury et al, 2016). Accordingly, earlier studies assessing language difficulties utilizing MoBa data have set a predefined cutoff of 1.5 SDs below the mean (Jin et al, 2020;Zambrana et al, 2014), corresponding to approximately 10%. In the current study, groups within the highest~90th percentile (indicating difficulties) were created to investigate different developmental paths of language difficulties.…”