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Assessment of Reading Precursors in Spanish-Speaking Children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2016

Anibal Puente ,
Jesús M. Alvarado ,
Paz Fernández ,
Mónica Rosselli ,
Alfredo Ardila  and
Amelia Jiménez
Anibal Puente*
Affiliation:
Universidad Andrés Bello (Chile)
Jesús M. Alvarado
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
Paz Fernández
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
Mónica Rosselli
Affiliation:
Florida Atlantic University (USA)
Alfredo Ardila
Affiliation:
Florida International University (USA)
Amelia Jiménez
Affiliation:
Universidad Complutense (Spain)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Anibal Puente. Instituto de Estudios Biofuncionales. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Paseo Juan XXIII, N° 1. 28040. Madrid (Spain). E-mail: apuente@psi.ucm.es
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Abstract

This study’s purpose was to analyse basic reading processes in different age groups of Spanish-speaking children using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and regression analysis. Two hundred forty-five children (aged 4 years and 9 months, to 9 years and 7 months; 120 boys, 125 girls), native Spanish-speakers, were selected from schools in Madrid. All participants were in either their last year of preschool or the first three years of elementary school, depending on their age. Nine classic reading tasks were created and administered to measure three reading skills: word recognition, phonological awareness, and reading comprehension. The results of the CFA show that data fit to proposed model with a general reading factor based on these three reading skills χ2(27) = 29.03, p = .36, RMSEA = .02, 90% CIs [.0, .05], CFI = 1.0. The word recognition skills were the best at describing reading performance in preschool children (R2 = .51 for word identification task); phonological awareness, especially rhyme identification task, discriminated well until second grade (R2 = .60); and finally, reading comprehension, basically phrase completion task, were the best measure of reading performance in third grade (R2 = .45).

Keywords

phonological awarenessreading comprehensionSpanish languageword recognition
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 19 , 2016 , E85
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2016 

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