Cognitive Abilities, Conditions of Learning, and the Early Development of Reading Skill

TWO GROUPS of primary-grade classrooms differing in their instructional approach to beginning reading were compared to assess the relationship between learning activities, cognitive abilities, and reading skill. Students' activities in 20 classrooms were observed, confirming that half of the classrooms followed an individualized language-experience approach and half a decoding-oriented basal reader approach. Year-end testing of the students revealed basic level reading skill to be less universally acquired in the language-experience group, but no difference in information processing and linguistic abilities between the two groups. In addition, while the various cognitive measures generally correlated positively with reading in the decoding-oriented group, significant negative correlations between linguistic ability and reading skill were observed in the language-experience group. It is argued that linguistic ability facilitates beginning reading only after a threshold of print-specific skills is acquired, and that the observed difference between the two groups stemmed primarily from their varying emphasis on systematic instruction, with corrective feedback, of these print-specific skills.