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Abstract:
This longitudinal study was designed to determine if
performances of kindergarten children in phonological and visual
short-term memory (STM) tasks respectively predict later abilities
to use sublexical and lexical reading procedures. Performances of
29 kindergarten children in the STM tasks were assessed when they
were 5 years old (i.e., before the beginning of reading
instruction). Reading performances for nonwords (sublexical
procedure), regular words (sublexical or lexical procedure) and
irregular words (lexical procedure) of the same 29 children were
assessed when they were 6, 7, and 8 years old (i.e., respectively
at the end of the first, second and third grade). Correlation
analysis shows that performance in complex nonwords repetition
(phonological STM task) at age 5 is a highly reliable predictor of
reading performance for nonwords at ages 6, 7, and 8, and for
regular words at ages 6 and 7, but not for irregular words at any
age. Furthermore, performances in visual STM tasks do not predict
reading performance for any types of items when letter knowledge at
age 5 is controlled. This study confirms that phonological STM is
selectively involved in the acquisition of sublexical reading
procedure and that there are no relationships between performances
in visual STM tasks and the acquisition of sublexical and lexical
reading procedures.
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