Exploring The Longitudinal Mechanisms Of Word Reading And Spelling:A Three-Wave Moderated Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis

Word reading and spelling are two basic skills for primary school students.The mechanism underlying these skills and their development is relatively complex.Many good texts have endeavored to offer a comprehensive overview of theoretical ideas in reading and spelling,inspiring a considerable amount of empirical study to unravel the nature of reading and spelling.Indeed,their interplay becomes intriguingly complicated when inspected from a developmental lens.Accumulating study has probed into the developmental nature of word reading and spelling in a longitudinal design.However,previous well-known theoretical models and research findings originated from alphabetic scripts may form a relatively narrow perspective.It may result in uncertainty as to the extent to which these models and findings can be generalized to other writing systems,such as Chinese,a typologically distinct orthography from alphabetic languages.While there is much exploration regarding the developmental patterns of word reading and spelling as well as their cognitive-linguistic underpinnings among alphabetic languages,there is still much to be learned about how these multiple cognitive-linguistic skills may affect logographic word reading and spelling development like in Chinese.Chinese demonstrate some incongruities in phonology,morphology,and orthography compared with alphabetic languages.Thus,more work on the Chinese writing system is warranted.In addition,word performance is greatly impacted by the quality processing of phonological,semantic,and orthographic representations in the mental lexicon.On top of this theoretical account,the complex interplay of different linguistic and cognitive skills along the multidimensional affair may further invite an in-depth exploration into how the quality processing of differential facets of word representation may impact the developmental crosstalk between word reading and spelling.To this end,the current longitudinal study incorporated multiple cognitive-linguistic measures tapping into students’ early lexical constituents in their multi-layered association with word reading and spelling outcomes by treating them both as precursors and moderators.An initial sample of 161 children from a rural primary school in Wenzhou was followed up every half a year during their transition from the end of Grade 3 and the end of Grade 4.In doing so,I hope to uncover the dynamic mechanisms underpinning the integrated word reading and spelling development in Chinese among mid-elementary school children utilizing a set of crosslagged panel analyses and moderated cross-lagged panel analyses.The present study aimed to answer the following questions: 1)What is the developmental relation between word reading and spelling? 2)How is the integrated relation between word reading and spelling development fed by lexical constituents including phonological awareness,morphological awareness,orthographic awareness,and vocabulary? 3)How does the longitudinal relation between word reading and spelling vary as a function of differential quality processing of lexical representations(including phonological,morphological,orthographic awareness,and vocabulary)?Findings suggested that: 1)a bidirectional model of reading-to-spelling and spelling-to-reading best described the data for Chinese mid-elementary age children during their transition from the end of Grade 3 to halfway Grade 4.Such bidirectional influence was not upheld as children furthered till the end of Grade 4;2)an overall predictive power of multiple sources of linguistic-cognitive measures was confirmed on the integrated word reading and spelling development.Specifically,phonological awareness was the strongest concurrent correlate in both word reading and spelling.Phonological awareness was also a significant longitudinal predictor of word spelling at Time 1 and Time 2.Morphological awareness was a significant concurrent associate of word reading and a significant longitudinal predictor of word spelling at Time 2.Vocabulary exhibited a similar predictive pattern with morphological awareness.Orthographic awareness was only a significant longitudinal predictor of word reading at Time 2;3)the longitudinal relation from T1 word reading to T2 word spelling varied as a function of quality processing of phonological and semantic representations(morphological awareness and vocabulary)in the learner’s mental lexicon.Specifically,the impact from word reading to later spelling was robust among children with low qualities of phonological and semantic representations,but such impact faded as children accumulated refined qualities of phonological and semantic representations.It underscores high-quality oral language experience towards a more balanced development of word reading and spelling.By contrast,the longitudinal path from word spelling to reading was relatively stable and not proportional to the levels of all facets in lexical quality processing.This study helps refine previous models of word reading and spelling development through an investigation into the developmental nature of word reading and spelling.It clarifies the distinct roles of lexical constituents(including phonological,morphological,and orthographic awareness,and vocabulary)in predicting Chinese word reading and spelling development.More importantly,the current study provides an insight into the changing mechanism of the crosstalk between word reading and spelling corresponding to different lexical quality processing.The pattern of results provides empirical evidence for the developmental nature of word reading and spelling.Also,this study unravels the multi-layered mechanisms of lexical constituents in the integrated development of word reading and spelling in Chinese by treating lexical constituents both as precursors and moderators.It can illustrate a more comprehensive underlying mechanism in word reading and spelling development.Moreover,the current study provides the empirical basis for formulating a precise framework for developing an effective word-level literacy curriculum with core training components corresponding to the important skills identified.In addition,it helps differentiate instruction to be implemented according to readers’ profiles in the representational quality of lexical constituents.More important,it informs an effective teaching program for children with limited proficiency in oral language skills that may be induced by unfavored socio-economic status by training their earlier word reading abilities to facilitate their later spelling development.