Dive Brief:
- What factors predict whether a child is going to gain traction in learning how to read? A multi-university study led by Texas A&M University sheds new light on what matters most in developing literacy.
- Researchers analyzed nearly 50,000 correlations across 137 coordinated cognitive and achievement tests and found that visual processing played a minimal role in reading ability. General intelligence also played less of a role than previous research suggested.
- Auditory processing, vocabulary and general knowledge were the most critical factors, the researchers found. Reasoning, memory and mental processing speed played secondary roles.
Dive Insight:
“Reading develops step by step, with each skill building on the one before it,” said Daniel Hajovsky, an associate professor in Texas A&M’s Department of Educational Psychology who led the study with researchers from four other universities. “Children make the most progress when adults understand and support the whole chain.”
Hajovsky said he and his colleagues from University of Kansas, St. John’s University, Montclair State University and Temple University went into “painstaking detail to amass and curate this massive dataset,” where previous studies in many cases relied on a single test battery.
To ensure students are gaining reading comprehension, Hajovsky suggested a few strategies based on the research:
- Closely monitor their comprehension.
- Use graphic and semantic organizers.
- Generate questions about what students read, which they can answer with some elaboration.
For students who experience reading difficulties, it’s also important to pinpoint any underlying cognitive impairments, Hajovsky said.
“Not all reading issues are dyslexia,” he said. “If they have strong phonological processing and weak comprehension skills, phonics-based instruction is not necessarily going to help. It might require developing vocabulary and background knowledge. And late readers, who eventually catch up, many of them have ADHD. Our article shows a relationship between working memory and reading. With ADHD, working memory can be impaired in many cases.”
While the idea that reading develops in a sequential, hierarchical way is not especially novel, it’s important for both educators and students to understand when the process breaks down, Hajovsky said. “It’s also important for parents to know that working on foundational skills at home can have big impacts on comprehension down the road.”
Ultimately, strong reading doesn’t come from one or two skills by themselves, but from a combination of progress in areas like sounding out words, developing vocabulary, practicing fluency and gaining understanding of what is being read, Hajovsky said.
“When a child struggles, the goal isn’t to guess or worry,” he said. “It’s to figure out which part of the process needs support, and focus on it early. If you focus on the right skills, children become far more confident readers.”
Because the skills are all interconnected, though, practicing one boosts confidence and mastery of others.
“Steady, consistent practice is more important than intensity,” Hajovsky said. “Struggles are not a sign of low ability, but they often reflect skills that need strengthening, in a system [of skills] that works together.”
