Articulation rate, naming speed, verbal short-term memory, and phonological awareness: longitudinal predictors of early reading development?

This study examines how measures of articulation rate, verbal short-term memory (STM), naming speed, and phonological awareness tasks administered in kindergarten and again in Grade 1 jointly and uniquely predict word reading and passage comprehension variance in Grades 1, 2, and 3. Results from regression and commonality analyses indicated that (a) when measured in Grade 1, phonological processing tasks were better, but not significantly better, predictors of later reading than when measured in kindergarten; (b) articulation rate and verbal STM did not uniquely predict reading if phonological awareness and naming speed were controlled; (c) when measured in kindergarten, both phonological awareness and naming speed accounted for unique variance in reading measures, and (d) when measured in Grade 1, phonological awareness was the strongest predictor of reading. Commonality analyses indicated that kindergarten letter recognition shares large parts of its predictive variance with phonological awareness and naming speed measures. Finally, controlling for the autoregressive effect of Grade 1 word reading reduced the usefulness of phonological awareness and naming speed as predictors of Grade 3 reading, but both still accounted for significant unique variance.