Conceptualizations of developmental trends are driven by the particular method used to analyze the period of change of interest. Various techniques exist to analyze developmental data, including individual growth curve analysis in observed and latent frameworks, cross-lagged regression to assess interrelations among variables, and multilevel…

The goal of the present study was to test opposing views about 4 issues concerning predictors of individual differences in Chinese written composition: (a) whether morphological awareness, syntactic processing, and working memory represent distinct and measureable constructs in Chinese or are just manifestations of general language ability; (b)…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the cognitive abilities that explain reading comprehension across childhood and early adulthood. Drawing from the standardization sample of the Woodcock-Johnson III, analyses were conducted with large samples at age levels spanning early childhood to early adulthood: 5 to 6 (n = 639), 7 to 8 (n =…

We examined theoretical issues concerning the development of reading fluency and language proficiency in 390 English Language Learners (ELLs,) and 149 monolingual, English-as-a-first language (EL1) students. The extent to which performance on these constructs in Grade 5 (i.e., concurrent predictors) contributes to reading comprehension in the…

Individuals with a history of specific language impairment (SLI) often have subsequent problems with reading skills, but there have been some discrepant findings as to the developmental time course of these skills. This study investigates the developmental trajectories of reading skills over a 9-year time-span (from 7 to 16 years of age) in a…

The purposes of this study were to (a) examine the developmental patterns in pseudoword reading and oral reading fluency in Spanish and English for Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in grades 1-3, and (b) investigate whether initial status and growth rates in reading fluency in Spanish and English, significantly predicted reading…

This research synthesis examines whether the association between print exposure and components of reading grows stronger across development. We meta-analyzed 99 studies (N = 7,669) that focused on leisure time reading of (a) preschoolers and kindergartners, (b) children attending Grades 1-12, and (c) college and university students. For all…

Finds that grade two students' comprehension scores did not differ significantly between oral reading and silent reading, while grade three and four students' comprehension scores were significantly higher after oral reading. Argues that these findings are consistent with a Vygotskian model of the transition from oral to silent reading. (SR)

This technical report describes a series of three studies designed to instruct students in the relationship between texts, comprehension questions, and two sources of answer information--the text to which a given question refers and their own background knowledge. The focus of the technical report is on individual differences in the amount and…

Examined the effects of mothers' conversations with their children on children's emergent literacy. Found a clear and fairly strong relationship between maternal conversation and children's literacy, especially for children's print concepts, vocabulary, and story comprehension skills. Children's early conversational participation showed a stronger…

Sentence Verification Technique tests were administered to 151 third and fourth graders on 3 occasions over a school year. Results indicate that reading and listening comprehension can be measured with the tests and that the 2 comprehension modalities develop independently, with reading comprehension being more sensitive to instruction. (TJH)

An age-dependent answer-selection sequence of answers on multiple-choice tests suggested by previous studies was supported using statistical rather than clinical means. Results with 2,810 students aged 88 months through 241 months given a reading comprehension test twice during a 5-month interval support the systematically connected age-dependent…