Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan;24(1):e12986.
doi: 10.1111/desc.12986. Epub 2020 Jun 28.

Dynamic relationships between phonological memory and reading: A five year longitudinal study from age 4 to 9

Anna J Cunningham  1   2 , Adrian P Burgess  1   3 , Caroline Witton  1   3 , Joel B Talcott  1   2 , Laura R Shapiro  1   3
Affiliations

Dynamic relationships between phonological memory and reading: A five year longitudinal study from age 4 to 9

Anna J Cunningham et al. Dev Sci. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

We reconcile competing theories of the role of phonological memory in reading development, by uncovering their dynamic relationship during the first 5 years of school. Phonological memory, reading and phoneme awareness were assessed in 780 phonics-educated children at age 4, 5, 6 and 9. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that phonological memory loaded onto two factors: verbal short-term memory (verbal STM; phonological tasks that loaded primarily on serial order memory) and nonword repetition. Using longitudinal structural equation models, we found that verbal STM directly predicted early word-level reading from age 4 to 6, reflecting the importance of serial-order memory for letter-by-letter decoding. In contrast, reading had no reciprocal influence on the development of verbal STM. The relationship between nonword repetition and reading was bidirectional across the 5 years of study: nonword repetition and reading predicted each other both directly and indirectly (via phoneme awareness). Indirect effects from nonword repetition (and verbal STM) to reading support the view that phonological memory stimulates phonemically detailed representations through repeated encoding of complex verbal stimuli. Similarly, the indirect influence of reading on nonword repetition suggests that improved reading ability promotes the phoneme-level specificity of phonological representations. Finally, the direct influence from reading to nonword repetition suggests that better readers use orthographic cues to help them remember and repeat new words accurately. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LZfTR0BjE.

Keywords: development; longitudinal; nonword repetition; phonological; reading; verbal short-term memory.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Alloway, T. P., Gathercole, S. E., Willis, C., & Adams, A. M. (2004). A structural analysis of working memory and related cognitive skills in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 87(2), 85-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2003.10.002
    1. Baguely, T. S. (2016). Positive correlation but negative regression coefficient. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_does_it_indicating_If_there_is_po.... [last accessed 19 December 2019]
    1. Beneventi, H., Tønnessen, F. E., Ersland, L., & Hugdahl, K. (2010). Working memory deficit in dyslexia: Behavioral and FMRI evidence. International Journal of Neuroscience, 120(1), 51-59. https://doi.org/10.3109/00207450903275129
    1. Binamé, F., & Poncelet, M. (2015). Order short-term memory capacity predicts nonword reading and spelling in first and second grade. Reading and Writing, 29(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-015-9577-9
    1. Castles, A., & Coltheart, M. (2004). Is there a causal link from phonological awareness to success in learning to read? Cognition, 91(1), 77-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00164-1

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources