Predicting the early growth of word and nonword reading fluency in a consistent syllabic orthography

Abstract

Background The present study aimed to examine the early growth of word and nonword reading fluency and their cognitive predictors in a consistent syllabic orthography (Japanese Hiragana). Method One hundred sixty‐nine Grade 1 Japanese children (Mage = 80.12 months, SD = 3.62) were followed until the middle of Grade 2 and assessed four times on word and nonword reading fluency in Hiragana. Nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, phonological memory and morphological awareness were also assessed at the beginning of Grade 1. Results Growth curve analysis showed that growth was faster in word reading than in nonword reading and the lexicality effect increased over time. Rapid automatized naming, phonological memory and morphological awareness were associated with the initial status and rate of growth in word and nonword reading. Furthermore, the initial status and the growth rates were highly correlated between word and nonword reading, even when the effects of the cognitive skills were controlled. Conclusions These findings suggest that, despite the remarkable differences in the growth trajectories of word and nonword reading fluency, they share at least a part of their underlying processes and develop closely in tandem during this period.

The Extrema of Japanese Literacy: Beyond the Bounds of Average Reading

“…These results may not closely mimic past interpretations of these effects in Japanese (Inoue et al., 2017, 2020), but much of this is because of the nonlinear approach we employed. Rather than simply looking at the singular associations between skills and reading, we allow this to be more flexible.…”

“…Phonological awareness (measured by an elision task; see Inoue et al, 2017) and morphological awareness (measured by a word analogy task; see Muroya et al, 2017) were used as predictors of hiragana fluency and kanji accuracy in each model based on the previous Japanese literacy studies reviewed above. Kanji accuracy refers to the ability to recognize kanji characters, while hiragana fluency refers to the ability to quickly read hiragana characters and words (see Inoue et al, 2017Inoue et al, , 2020 for previous studies which have used these measures). Nonverbal IQ (Raven, 2000) and vocabulary knowledge (The Japanese WISC-IV Publication Committee, 2010) were initially entered as control variables in our analysis, but were later omitted due to concurvity issues (see Data S1 for further information about our initial model fitting).…”

Home literacy environment and early reading skills in Japanese Hiragana and Kanji during the transition from kindergarten to primary school

“…The Hiragana word reading fluency task ( Inoue et al, 2020a ; Tanji and Inoue, 2022 ) was used. The task comprised 104 four-character Hiragana words taken from Grade 1 textbooks.…”

Predicting the developmental trajectories of Chinese reading, English reading, and mathematics: Evidence from Hong Kong Chinese children.

“…During the last decade, we have witnessed a growing body of longitudinal research on the developmental trajectories of academic achievement, such as reading and mathematics (e.g., Evans & Field, 2020; Georgiou, Inoue, Papadopoulos, & Parrila, 2021; Little et al, 2021; Scammacca et al, 2020). Several studies have also examined the relative importance of cognitive factors in predicting the growth patterns in reading and mathematics development (e.g., Aunola et al, 2004; Caravolas et al, 2013; Inoue et al, 2020; Lin et al, 2019; Wei et al, 2020; Xenidou-Dervou et al, 2018; Zhang et al, 2018). However, most of the existing studies examining the developmental trajectories of academic achievement have focused only on a single domain of academic skills (e.g., reading: Caravolas, 2017; mathematics: Evans & Field, 2020) or did not examine the predictors of growth trajectories (Cameron et al, 2015; Little et al, 2021), which makes it difficult to draw any definitive conclusions as to whether growth patterns are the same or different between academic skills and which predictors are domain-general and which more domain-specific.…”