Early predictors of emergent and conventional literacy skills: A longitudinal investigation

Emergent literacy skills in the preschool years provide an important foundation for later reading and writing skills. Research to date, however, has not investigated emergent literacy skills in the first three years of life and possible relations between these early skills and conventional literacy skills. The current study helped to fill this gap in the literature by examining the literacy development of children from 36 months through 12 years of age. Results indicated that advanced emergent literacy skills in the first three years of life predicted reading achievement in sixth grade. Findings also indicated that the frequency of pleasure reading at age 12 is associated with sixth-grade reading achievement and that the age at which a child first reads independently is negatively associated with reading achievement. This longitudinal investigation also compared the emergent literacy and conventional literacy skills of young children who were taught to use symbolic gestures in the first years of life with two different control groups: a verbal-training group and a non-intervention control group. Findings revealed that symbolic gesture use had a direct effect on emergent literacy, but this effect was nonsignificant. Further analyses showed that having a large repertoire of symbolic gestures in infancy appears to be associated with learning written symbols at a younger age and acquiring a larger reading vocabulary. This study points to the importance of examining emergent literacy skills from a young age and suggests that symbolic gesture use may enhance literacy skills.