The relations of early phonological awareness, rapid-naming and speed of processing with the development of spelling and reading: a longitudinal examination

Abstract

Phonological awareness has been found to be strongly related to spelling. Findings on the relations between rapid-naming and spelling are less consistent and have been suggested to be shared with speed of processing. This study set out to examine these relations in spelling and reading of Hebrew. Children attending the regular educational system were followed longitudinally (N = 70): phonological awareness, rapid-naming and speed of processing were tested in kindergarten and in grade 1, and spelling and reading were tested in grade 2. Kindergarten and grade 1 rapid-naming predicted spelling and word reading, and grade 1 phonological awareness predicted spelling, word reading and decoding. Speed of processing was an insignificant predictor. The findings extend the role of phonological awareness in spelling to an orthography with partial phonological representations and concurrently suggest weak relations. The results further suggest a link between rapid-naming and orthographic knowledge, which may not be explained by shared variance with speed of processing.