Genetic and environmental effects of serial naming and phonological awareness on early reading outcomes.

Abstract

The current study involved 281 early-school-age twin pairs (118 monozygotic, 163 same-sex dizygotic) participating in the ongoing Western Reserve Reading Project (S. A. Petrill, K. DeaterDeckard, L. A. Thompson, & C. Schatschneider, 2006). Twins were tested in their homes by separate examiners on a battery of reading-related skills including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, word knowledge, and phonological decoding. Results suggested that a core genetic factor accounted for a significant portion of the covariance between phonological awareness, rapid naming, and reading outcomes. However, shared environmental influences related to phonological awareness were also associated with reading skills. Keywordsreading; genetics; phonological awareness; development For nearly 2 decades, researchers have argued for the primacy of phonological processing in the acquisition of early literacy skills (Bradley & Bryant, 1983;Stanovich & Siegel, 1994;Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Burgess, & Hecht, 1997). More recently, others have suggested that in addition to phonology, naming speed constitutes an independent and additive source of variance in early reading skills (e.g., Wolf & Bowers, 1999). In a recent meta-analysis, Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea, and Hammill (2003) examined the association between phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), reading, and related abilities in a set of 49 independent samples. Although their results suggested that phonological awareness and RAN were factorially distinct, particularly in their prediction of real-world reading outcomes, phonological awareness and RAN were also significantly correlated with one another (weighted r = .39). Thus, although phonological awareness and RAN contributed independently to reading outcomes, there was also significant overlap between phonological awareness and the skills that underlie RAN performance.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stephen A. Petrill One important issue is the extent to which genes and environments influence the overlap and independence among phonological awareness, serial naming, and reading outcomes. It is clear that genetic and environmental influences are significant when examining not only reading outcomes (e.g., Pennington & Smith, 1983;Stevenson, Graham, Fredman, & McLoughlin, 1987) but also reading-related measures such as phonological awareness Knopik, Alarcón, & DeFries, 1998;Olson, Gillis, Rack, DeFries, & Fulker, 1991) and RAN (Compton, Davis, De-Fries, Gayan, & Olson, 2001). The importance of genetic influences on reading and reading performance has been further supported by a series of independent studies that have identified and replicated quantitative trait loci for reading on the short arms of Chromosomes 2, 6, and 18 (Cardon et al., 1994;Gayan et al., 1999;Grigorenko, 2003;Grigorenko et al., 1997;Grigorenko, Wood, Meyer, & Pauls, 2000;Fagerheim et al., 1999;Fisher et al., 1999Fisher et al., , 2002. Furthermore, studies have shown that genes are primarily responsi...

Word reading and reading comprehension: stability, overlap and independence

“…While we have limited power to detect significance of small effects due to our relatively small sample size, the estimates for the C paths were all very small, accounting for only 1-4% of the variance in each measure. This finding is in contrast to the results of Harlaar et al (2007) who found significant shared environmental influences on reading performance through age 10, as well as to studies of younger children that reported significant shared environmental influences on word reading and related components (e.g., Byrne et al, 2005aByrne et al, , 2006Petrill, Deater-Deckard, Schatschneider, & Davis, 2005;Petrill et al, 2007;Petrill et al, 2006b;Samuelsson et al, 2005).…”

“…Results of several studies suggest a core set of genetic influences common to many components of reading (e.g., Davis, Knopik, Olson, Wadsworth, & DeFries, 2001;Gayán & Olson, 2001Petrill, Deater-Deckard, Thompson, DeThorne, & Schatschneider, 2006b;Tiu et al, 2004). However, some studies have also found patterns of independent genetic effects for certain measures (Gayán & Olson, 2003;Petrill et al, 2007).…”

Does Training in Syllable Recognition Improve Reading Speed? A Computer-Based Trial With Poor Readers From Second and Third Grade

“…In longitudinal studies, naming speed has proven to be rather stable and naming speed deficits appear to be persistent in nature (e.g., Powell, Stainthorp, & Stuart, 2014). Some part of this stability can be explained by genetic sources, as a strong genetic influence has been shown in RAN performance (e.g., Byrne et al, 2006;Christopher et al, 2015;Davis et al, 2001;Petrill, Deater-Deckard, Thompson, DeThorne, & Schatschneider, 2006;Petrill et al, 2010;Samuelsson et al, 2007). There is also recent research evidence for specific genes that have been associated with RAN performance (Naples, Chang, Katz, & Grigorenko, 2009), some of them the same as those previously associated with dyslexia (Rubenstein, Raskind, Berninger, Matsushita, & Wijsman, 2014).…”

Exploring parental involvement and teachers’ activities in early literacy development

“…al., 2006(Byrne, et. al., & 2007Petrill, Deater-Deckard et al, 2006, 2007. Other influences include practices in the home (Petrill et al, 2006(Petrill et al, , 2007, socio-economic level and ethnicity (McCoach et al, 2006), and in the case of reading fluency at least, peer influences within the classroom (Foorman et al, 2008).…”