No abstract

In this study, we investigated longitudinal reciprocal relations among reading, executive function, and social-emotional skills in students from Grades 2 to 5, using the data set from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–2011. We addressed several important gaps in the literature on longitudinal reciprocal relations by using latent factors to represent the executive function and social-emotional skills in latent growth models with structured residuals, separating between- and within-person effects, and examining sample effects with a general population sample, students with reading difficulties, and high-performing students. Our results showed longitudinal reciprocal relations between reading and executive function in high-performing students, such that with development, the contribution of executive function to reading grew stronger while the contribution of reading to executive function remained stable; we found no longitudinal reciprocal relations between reading and social-emotional skills in any of the three sample groups; and these patterns of results remained the same based on the control of socioeconomic status and sensitivity analyses. Together, the results of this study support the heterogenous hypothesis of mutualism theory in education: The effect of mutualism may be stronger in some contexts and populations than in others. Longitudinal reciprocal relations between executive function and reading may be driven mostly by high-quality and intensive learning and practice in reading, not by socioeconomic status.

Word reading is critical for reading development. However, it has long been debated on the processes involved in real word and pseudoword decoding in developmental dyslexia (DD). We conducted a meta-analysis of 28 neuroimaging studies (519 participants with DD, 562 typical readers, age range 5–63 years, female 37.65%, 382 foci, 64 experimental contrasts) using effect-size signed differential mapping. Individuals with DD compared with typical readers showed hypoactivity in the left-lateralized reading network, including the occipitotemporal regions, temporoparietal regions, and inferior frontal gyri (pars triangularis and pars opercularis), in real word and pseudoword decoding. In pseudoword compared with real word decoding, hypoactivity was more severely reduced in the inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis). Metaregression showed that no hypoactivity was associated with age in real word decoding, whereas in pseudoword decoding, hypoactivity in the left superior temporal gyrus was negatively associated with age and hypoactivity in the left inferior temporal gyrus was quadratically associated with age. Accommodating the connectionist triangle model, our findings demonstrate that DD may be associated with abnormalities in both the direct orthography–phonology and the indirect orthography–semantics–phonology pathways across real word and pseudoword decoding. Compared with real word decoding, pseudoword decoding in those with DD may be more associated with abnormalities in the indirect pathway. With development, abnormalities in both pathways seem stable in real word decoding. In pseudoword decoding, abnormalities in the indirect pathway become more severe initially but could be improved in later development; abnormalities in the direct pathway could be persistently becoming more severe with age.

With a focus on within‐person effects, this study investigated mutualism among academic skills (reading, math, science) and between those skills and verbal working memory in a general population sample and groups with high or low skills from Grades 2 to 5 (2010–2016, N = 859–9040, age 6.27–13.13 years, 49% female, ethnically diverse). Mutualism was found between reading and science in all high‐ability groups, and between reading/math and verbal working memory only in high‐math students. These results remained the same when controlled for socioeconomic status and gender, and with sensitivity analyses. High‐skill students (especially high‐math students) may improve academic performance through accumulation of academic knowledge and mutualism between academic and cognition. Such mutualism may be driven by high‐quality, intensive academic practice.