Latent longitudinal profiles of early literacy and numeracy development

Children show considerable individual differences in their early literacy and numeracy skills around the start of primary school. In this study, we explored the domain-specific and domain-general predictors of these differences by following 205 children longitudinally across four time points, during kindergarten and first grade. Using a person-centered approach, we identified three latent longitudinal profiles for literacy and four profiles for numeracy. The differences between profiles were largely quantitative, reflecting a stable order from ‘low’ to ‘high’ performance across time on all tasks. The profiles were predictive of later reading and math achievement in second grade, including cross-domain effects. Domain-general cognitive skills (verbal and visuospatial working memory, non-verbal reasoning, RAN) differentiated more strongly between the numeracy profiles than between literacy profiles. Rapid development of letter knowledge, word decoding and arithmetic around the start of first grade may reflect a role of formal education in these skills. Our findings indicate that early literacy and numeracy development are characterized primarily by stable, quantitative differences between children, with domain-general cognitive skills showing a stronger association with numeracy compared to literacy. Together, these results highlight the importance of early identification of developmental trajectories, as these profiles strongly predict later academic outcomes across domains.