Cross-linguistic interactions are the hallmark of bilingual development. Theoretical perspectives highlight the key role of cross-linguistic distances and language structure in literacy development. Despite the strong theoretical assumptions, the impact of such bilingualism factors in heritage-language speakers remains elusive given high variability in children's heritage-language experiences. A longitudinal inquiry of heritage-language learners of structurally distinct languages – Spanish–English and Chinese–English bilinguals (N = 181, Mage = 7.57, measured 1.5 years apart) aimed to fill this gap. Spanish–English bilinguals showed stronger associations between morphological awareness skills across their two languages, across time, likely reflecting cross-linguistic similarities in vocabulary and lexical morphology between Spanish and English. Chinese–English bilinguals, however, showed stronger associations between morphological and word reading skills in English, likely reflecting the critical role of morphology in spoken and written Chinese word structure. The findings inform theories of literacy by uncovering the mechanisms by which bilingualism factors influence child literacy development.

The purpose of this study was to examine the early growth of morphological awareness and its predictors. We followed 172 English-speaking Canadian children (82 girls, 90 boys, Mage = 75.56 months at the first assessment point) from Grade 1 to Grade 3 and assessed them on nonverbal IQ, phonological short-term memory, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and vocabulary at the beginning of Grade 1 and on morphological awareness at the end of Grade 1, beginning and end of Grade 2, and beginning of Grade 3. Results of growth curve modeling showed different growth patterns for Word Analogy and Sentence Analogy. In addition, vocabulary and phonological awareness were associated with the initial status of morphological awareness, and phonological awareness and letter knowledge predicted the growth rate of morphological awareness. These findings suggest that code-related skills drive the development of morphological awareness during the early years of literacy instruction.

Notwithstanding remarkable phonological differences, the CV syllable is the most frequent syllable type in both Russian and Hebrew. This led to the prediction that the internal structure of the CVC syllable in the two languages, as reflected in phonological awareness tasks, might be similar. The study tested phonological awareness in two groups of monolingual kindergarteners: Hebrew-speaking (N = 35) and Russian-speaking (N = 20) in order to shed light on the underlying structure of the CVC syllable in the two languages. Phonological awareness tasks targeted awareness of the sub-syllabic structure (structured and unstructured) and phoneme awareness (initial and final). A linear mixed model analysis revealed that children in both groups showed greater facility with body-coda CV-C than with onset-rime C-VC syllable splitting and higher scores on final than on initial phoneme isolation tasks. The unstructured tasks also reflected the cohesion of the CV body in both languages. The findings demonstrate a similar internal representation of the CVC syllable in Russian and in Hebrew speakers as reflected in phonological awareness among preschoolers.

This study investigated the triple-deficit hypothesis in Arabic, a Semitic transparent orthography, among 258 native Arabic children from Grade 3, divided into a typical readers group (n = 204) and a dyslexia group (n = 54). Children were tested on word- and pseudoword-reading accuracy, word-reading fluency, phonological awareness (PA), naming speed (NS), orthographic processing (OP), and nonverbal reasoning ability. The results indicated that all children with dyslexia had either double or triple deficits, and none of them had a single deficit. Children with triple deficits showed lower performance than children with single and no deficits on all the reading measures. They have also lower performance to children with double deficits on word-reading accuracy but comparable scores in word- and pseudoword-reading fluency. In addition, OP was confirmed as an additional independent predictor of word-level reading skills besides PA and NS, while controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. The classification findings showed that the presence of a triple deficit maximizes the risk of reading failure. These findings support the additive nature of combined deficits in PA, NS, and OP. Moreover, they establish the benefit of including OP as a third deficit, in addition to PA and NS, underlying dyslexia in Arabic.

This longitudinal study investigated how lexical restructuring can stimulate emerging bilingual children’s phonological awareness in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Sixty-two English (L1) – French (L2) bilingual children (Mage = 75.7 months, SD = 3.2) were taught new English and French word pairs differing minimally in phonological contrast. The results indicated that increasing lexical specificity in English mediated the relationship between English vocabulary and English phonological awareness both concurrently and longitudinally at the end of Grade 1. A longitudinal relationship was established among French vocabulary, French lexical specificity, and French phonological awareness at the end of Grade 1. Notably, cross-language transfer from English lexical specificity was a better predictor of development in French phonological awareness, especially for words that contained phonological contrasts that occurred in both languages. The results from this study highlight the phonological foundations of early literacy and extend the lexical restructuring hypothesis to emerging bilingual children.

The orthographic forms (spellings) of second language (L2) words and sounds affect the pronunciation and awareness of L2 sounds, even after lengthy naturalistic exposure. This study investigated whether instruction could reduce the effects of English orthographic forms on Italian native speakers’ pronunciation and awareness of L2 English sounds. Italians perceive, produce, and judge the same sound as a short sound if it is spelled with one letter and as a long sound if it is spelled with a digraph, due to L1 Italian grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules whereby double consonant letters represent long consonants. Totally, 100 Italian learners of English were allocated to two conditions (final n = 88). The participants in the explicit GPC (EGPC) condition discovered English GPC rules relating to sound length through reflection, explicit teaching, and practice; the participants in the passive exposure condition practiced the same words as the EGPC participants, but with no mention of GPCs. Pre- and postintervention production (delayed word repetition) and phonological awareness (rhyme judgment) tasks revealed no positive effects of the instruction. GPC instruction appears to be ineffective in reducing orthographic effects on L2 phonology. Orthographic effects may be impervious to change, whether by naturalistic exposure or by instruction.

This study investigates reading comprehension in adult deaf and hearing readers. Using correlational analysis and stepwise regression, we assess the contribution of English language variables (e.g., vocabulary comprehension, reading volume, and phonological awareness), cognitive variables (e.g., working memory (WM), nonverbal intelligence, and executive function), and language experience (e.g., language acquisition and orthographic experience) in predicting reading comprehension in deaf and hearing adult bilinguals (native American Sign Language (ASL) signers, non-native ASL signers, and Chinese–English bilinguals (CEB)), and monolingual (ML) controls. For all four groups, vocabulary knowledge was a strong contributor to reading comprehension. Monolingual English speakers and non-native deaf signers also showed contributions from WM and spoken language phonological awareness. In contrast, CEB showed contributions of lexical strategies in English reading comprehension. These cross-group comparisons demonstrate how the inclusion of multiple participant groups helps us to further refine our understanding of how language and sensory experiences influence reading comprehension.

The present study aimed to shed light on (i) the most accessible phonological unit and (ii) the nature of letter knowledge among native Arabic-speaking preschool children living in Israel. One hundred and sixty-seven children were assessed on phonological awareness with initial and final isolation tasks as well as knowledge of the standard names and sounds of Arabic letters. Children’s responses in these tasks were categorized in accordance with the phonological unit that the child supplied. Regarding phonological unit accessibility, the novel finding of this study was the prevalence of a tri-phonemic /ʔεC/ unit that begins with the prefix /ʔε-/ and ends with the target (consonantal) phoneme which we have termed the “demi-phoneme” (e.g., /ʔεs/ for the consonant /s/). Awareness of the consonant–vowel unit was the next most prevalent unit followed lastly by the “smallest unit” – the phoneme. It appears that the demi-phoneme functions as a psycholinguistic aid to facilitate phoneme perception and pronunciation (as proposed by the 8th-century scholar – Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi) and both phoneme and demi-phoneme responses are underpinned by the same knowledge. With regard to letter knowledge, the standard name for Arabic letters was the preferred response and letter sounds were retrieved as a demi-phoneme unit.

While most English words are multisyllabic, research on literacy acquisition has tended to focus on early acquisition of monosyllabic words. The processes involved in multisyllabic word reading and spelling in middle childhood are likely to differ from those in monosyllabic reading and spelling. The current paper examines the contributions of morphological awareness (MA; awareness of derivational morphemes), prosodic sensitivity (sensitivity to lexical stress), and phonological awareness (PA; awareness of phonemes) for multisyllabic word reading and spelling, after accounting for background variables (age, vocabulary, nonverbal IQ, short-term memory). Seventy 7–10-year-old children completed a battery of tasks. MA and prosodic sensitivity were independent predictors of multisyllabic reading, while MA and PA were independent predictors of multisyllabic spelling. These results contrast with previous research, which instead found that PA plays a more prominent role while prosodic sensitivity appears to demonstrate only an indirect influence. However, those studies largely examined reading of shorter, one to three syllable words. These findings indicate when words are longer and multisyllabic, prosodic sensitivity, PA, and MA have differing direct influences on literacy. MA and prosodic sensitivity relate to word reading, while MA and PA are important for spelling.

Word reading is a fundamental skill in reading and one of the building blocks of reading comprehension. Theories have posited that for second language (L2) learners, word reading skills are related if the children have sufficient experience in the L2 and are literate in the first language (L1). The L1 and L2 reading, phonological awareness skills, and morphological awareness skills of Syrian refugee children who speak Arabic and English were measured. These children were recent immigrants with limited L2 skills and varying levels of L1 education that was often not commensurate with their ages. Within- and across-language skills were examined in 96 children, ages 6 to 13 years. Results showed that phonological awareness and morphological awareness were strong within-language variables related to reading. Additionally, Arabic phonological awareness and morphological processing were strongly related to English word reading. Commonality analyses for variables within constructs (e.g., phonological awareness, morphological awareness) but across languages (Arabic and English) in relation to English word reading showed that in addition to unique variance contributed by the variables, there was a high degree of overlapping variance.

Although learning second language phonology is a difficult task, orthographic input may support the learning of difficult sound contrasts through a process known as orthographic facilitation. We extended this research by examining the effects of orthographic input together with individual differences in three different phonological learning processes, namely, the production of, perception of, and memorization of words containing three Marathi phonemic contrasts (i.e., [k-kh], [], and []) by native English speakers. Moreover, because the [] and [] contrasts were particularly challenging in previous auditory training studies (e.g., Polka, 1991), we used cross-modal training in order to enhance learning by pairing auditory perception tasks with visual orthographic information, the amplification of relevant acoustic cues, and proprioceptive descriptions to the articulation of target phonemes. Results showed significant learning from the pre- to the posttest across tasks and contrasts, supporting the effectiveness of cross-modal training. Furthermore, incongruent orthographic input could inhibit perception, and orthographic input generally supported memory for word pronunciations. Moreover, individual differences regarding phonological skills and nonspeech auditory discrimination predicted participants’ success in different phonological learning processes. These results provide a detailed picture of the complexity between different aspects of second language phonological learning and cross-modal training.

Music and language engage similar processing mechanisms, including auditory processing and higher cognitive functions, recruiting partially overlapping brain structures. It has been argued that both are related in child development and that linguistic functions can be positively influenced by music training above 4-years-old. In this randomized control study, with a test–training–retest methodology, 44 children (3–4 years old) were assessed with a phonological awareness test, prior and after an intervention period of a school year with weekly music classes (experimental group, n = 23) or visual arts classes (control group, n = 21) in kindergarten. In the preassessment there were no significant differences between groups. When comparing pre- and postassessment, results showed significant differences in both groups, but music classes’ students outperformed the control group, showing larger differences between the beginning and the end of the intervention. Improvement in both groups is expected due to general developmental reasons. However, the fact that children receiving music classes show greater improvement indicates that music lessons have influenced phonological awareness. Our results support the hypothesis that music training may promote language abilities, specifically phonological awareness, prior to the ages previously studied.

This study investigated whether individual differences in receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition at age 2 years, 4 months to 3 years, 4 months predicted phonological awareness 2 years later. One hundred twenty-one children were tested twice. During the first testing period (Time 1), children’s receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition were measured. Nonword repetition accuracy in the present study was distinct from other widely used measures of nonword repetition in that it focused on narrow transcription of diphone sequences in each nonword that differed systematically in phonotactic probability. At the second testing period (Time 2), children’s phonological awareness was measured. The best predictors of phonological awareness were a measure of speech production and a measure of phonological processing derived from performance on the nonword repetition task. The results of this study suggest that nonword repetition accuracy provides an implicit measure of phonological skills that are indicative of later phonological awareness at an age when children are too young to perform explicit phonological awareness tasks reliably.