| The purpose of this study was to identify behaviors in three-four-year-olds that predict language and literacy skills at the earliest stages of reading acquisition. It has already been established that several phonological (i.e., rhyme) and nonphonological (i.e., syntax) skills in kindergarteners predict later reading abilities (Badian, 1994, 2000; Catts, 1997; Scarborough & Dobrich, 1990). The main question addressed was "Do similar behaviors predict literacy in young children?" Few studies have examined predictive skills in children younger than five years of age. This major question was approached by studying longitudinal behaviors of 38 children on tasks that are normally distributed at three years and four years of age relative to their performance on the Assessment of Language and Literacy (ALL; Lombardino, Lieberman, Brown, 2005).;Results of the study showed that the best predictors of the ALL Language Index score from exploratory tasks administered to the three-year-olds included Rhyme Judgment (B = .394; t = 2.27; p = .031) and Segmentation (B = .447; t = 2.06; p = .050) when a forced entry procedure was utilized in the analysis. When all highly related correlations were removed from the analysis, the tasks that best predicted the ALL Language Index score at age four included Visual Short-Term Memory (B = .487; t = 3.341; p = .002), Rhyme Knowledge ( B = .352; t = 2.595; p = .015) and Digit-Word Span Backward (B = .255; t = 1.907; p = .067) which was a moderate predictor.;At age three, the best predictors of the ALL Emergent Literacy Index score included Letter Identification (B = .516; t = 2.54 p = .017) and Rhyme Judgment ( B = .270; t = 1.99 p = .056). At four years of age, the best predictors in this area were Rhyme Knowledge ( B = .512; t = 4.123 p = .000), Digit-Word Span Backward (B = .394; t = 3.288; p = .003) and Segmentation (B = .303; t = 2.128; p = .042). These findings are in agreement with other literature (Jorm, 1983; Case, 1989; Gathercole, et al., 2004; de Jong, 1998; Swanson, et al., 2009; Baddeley, 2000; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989) that shows the contribution of working memory phonological awareness (Adams, 1990; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; National Reading Panel, 2000; Scarborough, 1998) to the development of literacy.;Findings from this study indicate that short-term memory, sequential memory visual short-term memory and working memory should be studied further as potential predictors. They should be considered as potentially valuable constructs in the early identification of reading disabilities underlying well-known and validated predictors. |
