Longitudinal associations of phonological processing skills, Chinese word reading, and arithmetic

This 13-month longitudinal study investigated whether different phonological processing components independently predicted individual differences in Chinese word reading and arithmetic. Three phonological processing skills [phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid automatized naming (RAN)], word reading, and arithmetic were assessed among eighty-eight Hong Kong Chinese first graders (Mean age = 79.88 months, SD = 4.71), along with vocabulary and nonverbal intelligence. These abilities were measured again at second grade (Mean age = 92.89 months, SD = 5.14). Simple correlations showed that phonological awareness and RAN at grade one were significantly associated with word reading and arithmetic both at grade one and at grade two, while phonological memory at grade one was associated with arithmetic, but not word reading, at both grades. Among the three phonological skills, RAN at grade one uniquely predicted 4% of the variance in children’s reading performance and 15% of the variance in arithmetic at second grade, beyond autoregressive effects, vocabulary, and nonverbal intelligence (model 3a). In contrast, neither phonological awareness nor phonological memory significantly predicted children’s later reading and arithmetic performance. There was also a reciprocal influence of Chinese word reading, rather than arithmetic skills, on later RAN performance. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature B.V.