UWA researchers have demonstrated that accurately identifying children at risk of literacy problems before they begin to struggle at school requires an assessment approach which combines child, family and environmental factors.
The longitudinal study led by UWA's School of Psychology expert Dr Steve Heath followed 102 children (56 boys and 46 girls) from when they were approximately four years to six years of age.
"Literacy researchers now know a lot about things in young children that influence how well they will pick up literacy, and also what family factors are important influences," she says
"[However] nobody had brought all this information together to see if they could achieve more accurate early identification of children at risk for literacy problems."
They used a range of oral language, phonological awareness (PA; the way we process speech sounds), sentence recall, rapid naming of highly-familiar items, letter knowledge, and word reading measures to test children's pre-literacy and early literacy skills.
Children were assessed at the beginning of Preschool, the beginning and end of Kindergarten, and end of Year One.
The researchers then combined this information with family and environmental factors— including the parent's educational attainment level, the parents' own PA, and how able parents felt in supporting their child's literacy development— which was assessed through questionnaires taken by the parents.
[For more of this story, written by Rebecca Graham, go to http://medicalxpress.com/news/...rs-affect-child.html]
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