We examined the growth of spelling skills in a large sample of Norwegian children (N = 228) over the first 3 years in school. The roles of phoneme awareness, letter knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), visual-verbal paired-associate learning, and verbal short-term memory as predictors of later spelling skills were examined. Phoneme awareness…

The authors present the results of a 2-year longitudinal study of 228 Norwegian children beginning some 12 months before formal reading instruction began. The relationships between a range of cognitive and linguistic skills (letter knowledge, phoneme manipulation, visual-verbal paired-associate learning, rapid automatized naming (RAN), short-term…

Seventy-three subjects tested at grade 4 were retested at grade 7 on five tasks. In addition, 138 seventh graders were tested on these tasks for the first time. Using performance at grade 4 to predict performance on different tasks at grade 7 often was more satisfactory than using seventh-grade predictors. (Author/WY)

Kindergarten children were administered a paired-associate learning task at the beginning and end of the school-year, under either regular (control) or self-generated visual imagery instructions. Age predicted performance in the imagery but not in the control condition. Results supported the developmental imagery hypothesis. (Author/RD)