This research synthesis examines whether the association between print exposure and components of reading grows stronger across development. We meta-analyzed 99 studies (N = 7,669) that focused on leisure time reading of (a) preschoolers and kindergartners, (b) children attending Grades 1-12, and (c) college and university students. For all measures in the outcome domains of reading comprehension and technical reading and spelling, moderate to strong correlations with print exposure were found. The outcomes support an upward spiral of causality: Children who are more proficient in comprehension and technical reading and spelling skills read more; because of more print exposure, their comprehension and technical reading and spelling skills improved more with each year of education. For example, in preschool and kindergarten print exposure explained 12% of the variance in oral language skills, in primary school 13%, in middle school 19%, in high school 30%, and in college and university 34%. Moderate associations of print exposure with academic achievement indicate that frequent readers are more successful students. Interestingly, poor readers also appear to benefit from independent leisure time reading. We conclude that shared book reading to preconventional readers may be part of a continuum of out-of-school reading experiences that facilitate children's language, reading, and spelling achievement throughout their development.

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In a quantitative meta-analysis, the effects of phonological awareness training on reading were shown. In a homogeneous set of U.S. studies with a randomized or matched design, the combined effect sizes for phonological awareness and reading were d = 0.73 (r = .34, N = 739) and d = 0.70 (r = .33, N = 745), respectively. Thus, experimentally manipulated phonological awareness explains about 12% of the variance in word-identification skills. The combined effect size for long-term studies of the influence of phonological awareness training on reading was much smaller, d = 0.16 (r = .08, N = 1,180). Programs combining a phonological and a letter training were more effective than a purely phonological training. Furthermore, training effects were stronger with posttests assessing simple decoding skills than with real-word-identification tests. In sum, phonological awareness is an important but not a sufficient condition for early reading.

This meta-analysis examines to what extent interactive storybook reading stimulates two pillars of learning to read: vocabulary and print knowledge. The authors quantitatively reviewed 31 (quasi) experiments (n = 2,049 children) in which educators were trained to encourage children to be actively involved before, during, and after joint book reading. A moderate effect size was found for oral language skills, implying that both quality of book reading in classrooms and frequency are important. Although teaching print-related skills is not part of interactive reading programs, 7% of the variance in kindergarten children's alphabetic knowledge could be attributed to the intervention. The study also shows that findings with experimenters were simply not replicable in a natural classroom setting. Further research is needed to disentangle the processes that explain the effects of interactive reading on children's print knowledge and the strategies that may help transfer intervention effects from researchers to children's own teachers.

A meta-analysis was conducted on the effects of technology-enhanced stories for young children’s literacy development when compared to listening to stories in more traditional settings like storybook reading. A small but significant additional benefit of technology was found for story comprehension (g+ = 0.17) and expressive vocabulary (g+ = 0.20), based on data from 2,147 children in 43 studies. When investigating the different characteristics of technology-enhanced stories, multimedia features like animated pictures, music, and sound effects were found beneficial. In contrast, interactive elements like hotspots, games, and dictionaries were found to be distracting. Especially for children disadvantaged because of less stimulating family environments, multimedia features were helpful and interactive features were detrimental. Findings are discussed from the perspective of cognitive processing theories.

In attachment theory, several hypotheses about the association between attachment and cognitive development have been generated. In a series of meta-analyses on 32 studies, we tested whether the quality of attachment is related to intelligence (DQ or IQ) and to language competence. Attachment showed a weak association with DQ and IQ measures (combined v = .09; N = 1026). The combined effect size for the relation between attachment and language competence was v = .28 (1^ -303). We conclude, first, that differences in intelligence do not play a major role in shaping attachment relationships. Differences in quality of attachment are not confounded in any significant way with differences in intelligence. Second, secure children appeared to be more competent in the language domain than insecure children. Language development appears to be stimulated in the context of a secure attachment relationship because secure parents may be better 'teachers' and secure children may be better motivated 'students'.What do we know about the relation between socio-emotional and cognitive development? Are these central dimensions of human development orthogonal or intertwined, and if the latter is the case, how strong is the association between socio-emotional and cognitive functioning? In this paper we would like to address these questions in the context of attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969). It has been suggested that the first attachment relationship between infants and their parents is an important foundation for the children's development in other domains, such