Development of young children's reading self-concepts: An examination of emerging subcomponents and their relationship with reading achievement.

Development of reading self-concept in young children was examined in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 revealed a negative item response phenomenon similar to that reported by H. W. Marsh (1986), who found that children's responses to negative items on a self-concept scale were inconsistent with their responses to positive items. In Experiment 2, developmental psycholinguistic factors were considered in an effort to eliminate the negative item response phenomenon by changing the wording and presentation of the items. Experiment 3 suggested that reading self-concept may be defined as comprising three subcomponents: perceptions of competence in reading, perceptions of difficulty with reading, and attitudes toward reading. Experiment 4 showed how the relations among these subcomponents change with increasing age and how they relate to the development of reading and reading-related skills