RESUMO
Learning to read and write are essential academic skills that children develop during their early years of primary school. These skills are supported by various predictive indices that emerge in early childhood. This review has three main goals: to identify which factors are closely examined as predictors for reading and writing, specifically decoding and encoding skills, in different populations and languages (Objective 1); to assess the longitudinal relationship between these predictors and reading and writing skills (Objective 2), considering difficulties or disorders in these areas (Objective 3), during school-age. Using the PRISMA methodology, 81 articles were reviewed. As a first result, there is a significant difference in the number of studies investigating the relationship between predictors and reading (n = 75) compared to writing (n = 18). The most extensively studied predictors for both skills are phonological awareness, language skills, executive functions, rapid automatized naming, and non-verbal cognitive skills. English is the most studied language. Results indicated variability in the relationship between predictors and reading/writing, possibly due to differences in the analyzed populations, chosen outcome measures, and statistical analyses. Additionally, few studies explored the long-term connection between predictors and learning difficulties. In summary, recognizing the multifaceted nature of predictive factors for reading and writing is crucial, and early screening is important for tailored preventive interventions in case of early deficiencies. Future research should delve into writing, conduct cross-cultural studies with diverse languages, and explore the role of predictive factors in understanding reading and writing difficulties or disorders.
RESUMO
Previous studies suggest that lexical competence is an important factor that influences reading skills and spelling accuracy in primary school children. Understanding the relationship between these skills will provide valuable insights to improve reading and writing enhancement and intervention strategies. The aim of this pre-post longitudinal study is to examine the effectiveness of an enhancement program, in which there are activities proposed through a narrative and metacognitive methodology, designed to develop the cognitive processes of lexical acquisition and its effects on reading and writing ability. A total of 74 primary school children (M-age = 7.04 years) participated in the research. They were divided into groups: experimental, which carried out the enhancement, and control groups, which carried out the typical school program. The results show that children who carried out the enhancement obtained higher scores in reading skills, specifically in reading accuracy and text comprehension and spelling accuracy, in comparison with their peers in the control group. These results suggest that strengthening the lexical semantic pathway, as theorized by Coltheart's two-way model, can lead to improved reading comprehension and diminished reading errors and spelling inaccuracies.
