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Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?

BACKGROUND: Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary...

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Autores principales: Duff, Fiona J, Reen, Gurpreet, Plunkett, Kim, Nation, Kate
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4674965/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25557322
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12378
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author Duff, Fiona J
Reen, Gurpreet
Plunkett, Kim
Nation, Kate
author_facet Duff, Fiona J
Reen, Gurpreet
Plunkett, Kim
Nation, Kate
author_sort Duff, Fiona J
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for reading. However, evidence to date suggests predictive ability from infant vocabulary to later language and literacy is low. This study provides an investigation into, and interpretation of, the magnitude of such infant to school-age relationships. METHODS: Three hundred British infants whose vocabularies were assessed by parent report in the 2nd year of life (between 16 and 24 months) were followed up on average 5 years later (ages ranged from 4 to 9 years), when their vocabulary, phonological and reading skills were measured. RESULTS: Structural equation modelling of age-regressed scores was used to assess the strength of longitudinal relationships. Infant vocabulary (a latent factor of receptive and expressive vocabulary) was a statistically significant predictor of later vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading accuracy and reading comprehension (accounting for between 4% and 18% of variance). Family risk for language or literacy difficulties explained additional variance in reading (approximately 10%) but not language outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Significant longitudinal relationships between preliteracy vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading support the theory that vocabulary is a cognitive foundation of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Importantly however, the stability of vocabulary skills from infancy to later childhood is too low to be sufficiently predictive of language outcomes at an individual level – a finding that fits well with the observation that the majority of ‘late talkers’ resolve their early language difficulties. For reading outcomes, prediction of future difficulties is likely to be improved when considering family history of language/literacy difficulties alongside infant vocabulary levels.
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spelling pubmed-46749652015-12-18 Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes? Duff, Fiona J Reen, Gurpreet Plunkett, Kim Nation, Kate J Child Psychol Psychiatry Original Articles BACKGROUND: Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for reading. However, evidence to date suggests predictive ability from infant vocabulary to later language and literacy is low. This study provides an investigation into, and interpretation of, the magnitude of such infant to school-age relationships. METHODS: Three hundred British infants whose vocabularies were assessed by parent report in the 2nd year of life (between 16 and 24 months) were followed up on average 5 years later (ages ranged from 4 to 9 years), when their vocabulary, phonological and reading skills were measured. RESULTS: Structural equation modelling of age-regressed scores was used to assess the strength of longitudinal relationships. Infant vocabulary (a latent factor of receptive and expressive vocabulary) was a statistically significant predictor of later vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading accuracy and reading comprehension (accounting for between 4% and 18% of variance). Family risk for language or literacy difficulties explained additional variance in reading (approximately 10%) but not language outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Significant longitudinal relationships between preliteracy vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading support the theory that vocabulary is a cognitive foundation of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Importantly however, the stability of vocabulary skills from infancy to later childhood is too low to be sufficiently predictive of language outcomes at an individual level – a finding that fits well with the observation that the majority of ‘late talkers’ resolve their early language difficulties. For reading outcomes, prediction of future difficulties is likely to be improved when considering family history of language/literacy difficulties alongside infant vocabulary levels. Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2015-08 2015-01-04 /pmc/articles/PMC4674965/ /pubmed/25557322 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12378 Text en © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Duff, Fiona J
Reen, Gurpreet
Plunkett, Kim
Nation, Kate
Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?
title Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?
title_full Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?
title_fullStr Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?
title_full_unstemmed Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?
title_short Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?
title_sort do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4674965/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25557322
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12378
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