The Relationship of Logical Reasoning Ability, Oral Language Comprehension, and Home Experiences to Preschool Children's Print Awareness

Abstract

Abstract. The study examined the relationship of logical reasoning ability, oral language comprehension, and home experiences to preschoolers' print awareness. Measures of print awareness were: letter naming, visual discrimination, auditory discrimination, and two measures which assessed concepts about print (knowledge about the purposes of print in the environment and knowledge about the processes involved in using print). Sixty three-, four-, and five-year-olds were tested on the measures of print awareness, logical reasoning ability, and lexical and grammatical comprehension of oral language. Information on home experiences was obtained by surveying parents on their own reading habits and the reading-related activities in which they participated with their children. Three measures-logical reasoning ability, lexical comprehension, and home teaching activites-provided the best overall model in accounting for differences in children's performances across the print awareness measures.Most teachers would quickly assert that entering schoolchildren differ greatly in ability to benefit from reading instruction. At one end of the spectrum is the child who already reads; at the other is the child who hasn't a clue about the purpose of the squiggles on the page. Investigators and practitioners have searched extensively for explanations of these differences in children's reading readiness. For the most part, they have confined their search to differences which exist among children when they enter school, with much less effort devoted to tracing the development of differences in print awareness over the preschool period. Yet differences in reading readiness among children when they enter school must reflect different

Pragmatic Language Intervention for Adults With Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism: A Feasibility Study

“…Inference in reading was not directly targeted in the pragmatic language intervention program; however, the results suggest that explicit instruction in social inference ability may transfer to inference ability in reading. This finding adds support to the notion that a reciprocal relationship exists among the four components of literacy (speaking, listening, reading, and writing;Bradley & Bryant, 1983;Catts & Kamhi, 2005;Englert & Thomas, 1987;Gillon & Dodd, 1995;Hiebert, 1980;Kroll, 1981;Ruddell & Ruddell, 1994).…”

4. Inference and reasoning in discourse comprehension

“…Although pragmatic knowledge accumulates through experience, mainly, it is less clear how we come to possess our deductive abilities. A previously cited body of research supports the hypothesis that some facility with logic reveals itself rather early in life (e.g., Braine and Rumain 1981;Hiebert 1980); and recent work has even shown that children can think more logically than adults (Noveck 2001). Indeed, a basic logical ability is hypothesized by some to be a part of our natural cognitive endowment, variously called a natural, or mental logic (e.g., Braine and O'Brien 1998;Rips 1994), a syntax of thought, or mentalese (Fodor 1975;Pinker 1994), or a logic instinct (Crain and Khlentzos 2010).…”

“…Contemporary research on logic and behaviour began in the reasoning literature. Early work on psychological models of deduction followed the Piagetian tradition by investigating children's basic competence with logic (e.g., Braine 1959;Braine and Rumain 1981;Hiebert 1980;Lowerre and Scandura 1973;Paris 1976). Later work extended this research to adults, and sought to distinguish the relative contributions of logic and pragmatics (e.g., Johnson-Laird, Legrenzi, and Legrenzi 1972).…”

Relations of the home literacy environment (HLE) to the development of reading‐related abilities: A one‐year longitudinal study

“…The present study extended HLE research by testing six different conceptualizations of the HLE and their independent and joint contributions to preschoolage children's literacy and language development. The conceptualizations were derived from those used previously by researchers (e.g., Burgess & Lonigan, 1997;Hiebert, 1980;Leseman & de Jong, 1998;Senechal, LeFevre, Thomas, & Daley, 1998).…”

“…Other researchers have also found that different aspects of the HLE influence different outcomes (e.g., Meyer, Stahl, Wardrop, & Linn, 1994;. In order to extend our understanding of the potential role of the preschool HLE in the development of individual differences in language and literacy, studies are needed that test the relations of different aspects of the HLE to a variety of age-appropriate developmental outcomes (Dunning, Mason, & Stewart, 1994;Ehri & Sweet, 1991;Hess, Hollaway, Dickson, & Price, 1984;Hiebert, 1980;Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). These studies should address how particular features of family experience map onto the developing components of language and literacy at a variety of stages of development.…”