Jason L. Anthony

This study evaluated Earobics Step 1, a commercial literacy program, and examined whether impact varied with children's school readiness and classroom instruction. Participants included 247 kindergarteners from 37 classrooms in nine Title 1 schools. Children were randomly assigned to receive 21 weeks of computerized instruction with Earobics or Building Blocks, a commercial mathematics program. Tests of phonological awareness (PA), graphophonemic knowledge, word reading, and vocabulary were administered at three points during the year, and standardized reading tests were administered at the end of year. Earobics did not consistently impact any outcome across children. However, it moderately accelerated PA development among children who started kindergarten with poor emergent literacy, and it positively impacted reading outcomes, but not PA, among children with relatively advanced emergent literacy. Earobics accelerated PA, graphophonemic knowledge, and reading development in classrooms where the teacher provided lots of instruction targeting oral language, PA, phonics, and writing. However it had no impact in classrooms where there was relatively little instruction targeting these skills or in classrooms where there was a lot of small group reading instruction.

Research Findings: In an effort toward developing a comprehensive, effective, scalable, and sustainable early childhood education program for at-risk populations, we conducted an experimental evaluation of the value added by 2 family involvement programs to the Texas Early Education Model (TEEM). A total of 91 preschool classrooms that served minority populations of low socioeconomic status were randomly assigned to TEEM, TEEM plus Raising a Reader (RAR), or TEEM plus RAR augmented by Family Nights. Assessments of oral language and print knowledge were completed by more than 500 children at the beginning and end of the school year. Multilevel analyses of covariance controlled for classroom nesting and individual differences in age, ethnicity, and pretest scores. Although RAR alone demonstrated no added value, augmentation of RAR with Family Nights demonstrated significant impacts on measures of oral language (ts = 1.81–2.51, .05 < ps < .01) and print knowledge (t = 2.39, p < .01). Practice or Policy: Thus, parent training in shared reading practices appears to be necessary for children to benefit from programs that enrich the home literacy environment. That the combined program particularly benefited children who started preschool lagging behind in school readiness (ts = 1.64–2.49, ps < .05) suggests that this comprehensive model offers hope for closing the achievement gap.

This study presents an empirically-based statewide system that links information about pre-kindergarten programs with children’s school readiness scores to certify pre-kindergarten classrooms as promoting school readiness. Over 8,000 children from 1,255 pre-kindergarten classrooms were followed longitudinally for one year. Pre-kindergarten quality indicators of intentional instruction, an early literacy focus, and professional development were key predictors of kindergarten outcomes. A latent profile analysis identified pre-kindergarten classrooms that were high on pre-kindergarten quality indicators and high on kindergarten outcomes (67.3%), low on pre-kindergarten quality and kindergarten outcomes (21.3%), or low on quality but high on outcomes (11.4%). The last group of classrooms was likely to serve middle-class children and not use the state program model. This project demonstrates how a scientific approach can inform stakeholders and parents about the effectiveness of early childhood programs.

Purpose: To identify weaknesses in print awareness and phonological processing that place children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) at increased risk for reading difficulties.Method: Language, literacy, and phonological skills of 3 groups of preschool-age children were compared: a group of 68 children with SSDs, a group of 68 peers with normal speech matched on receptive vocabulary, and a group of 68 peers with normal speech and language.Results: The SSD group demonstrated impairments in expressive phonological awareness (ts = 3.45 to 8.17,ps < .001, effect size [ES] = 0.51 to 1.04), receptive phonological awareness (zs = 2.26 to 5.21,ps ≤ .02, ES = 0.39 to 0.79), accessing phonological representations (zs = 3.34 to 5.83,ps < .001, ES = 0.59 to 0.91), quality of phonological representations (zs = 2.35 to 13.11,ps ≤ .02, ES = 0.44 to 1.56), and word reading (ts = 2.48 to 4.42,ps ≤ .01, ES = 0.22 to 0.54). Analyses of covariance found that lower performances of the SSD group on tests of phonological awareness and word reading could be explained by their weaknesses in quality and accessibility of phonological representations.Conclusions: The present study makes a significant theoretical contribution to the literature as the first study, to our knowledge, that has tested the hypothesis that weaknesses in representation-related phonological processing may underlie the difficulties in phonological awareness and reading that are demonstrated by children with SSDs.

Individual differences in abilities to form, access, and hone phonological representations of words are implicated in the development of oral and written language. This study addressed three important gaps in the literature concerning measurement of individual differences in phonological representation. First, we empirically examined the dimensionality of phonological representation abilities. Second, we empirically compared how well typical measures index various representation-related phonological processing abilities. Third, we supply data on Spanish phonological representation abilities of incipient Spanish–English bilingual children to address the need for information on phonological representation across languages. Specifically, nine measures of accessibility to and precision of phonological presentations were administered to 129 preschool children in the United States. Confirmatory factor analyses validated three separate but correlated a priori phonological processing abilities, that is, efficiency of accessing phonological codes, precision of phonological codes as reflected in speech production, and precision of phonological codes as reflected in speech perception. Most prototypic measures were strong indicators of their respective representation-related phonological ability. We discuss how the current data in Spanish compares to limited data in English, and the implications for the organization of phonological representations abilities.

Phonological awareness, phonological memory, and phonological access to lexical storage play important roles in acquiring literacy. We examined the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of these phonological processing abilities (PPA) in 389 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the validity of each PPA as separate from general cognitive ability and separate from each other. Multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM) with mean structure demonstrated that older preschoolers have better developed latent PPA than younger preschoolers but that the structure of PPA is equivalent. RAN was found uniquely associated with letter knowledge and text discrimination in younger preschoolers, and PA was found uniquely associated with word reading skills in older preschoolers. Finally, general cognitive ability was only indirectly associated with emergent literacy via PPA. These results highlight the importance of PPA in the early literacy development of English-speaking preschool children.

Phonological awareness (PA), phonological memory (PM), and phonological access to lexical storage (also known as RAN), play important roles in acquiring literacy. We examined the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of these phonological processing abilities (PPAs) in 147 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children whose native language was Spanish. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the validity of each PPA as separate from general cognitive ability and separate from each other. Moreover, structural equation modeling found RAN uniquely associated with knowledge of Spanish letter names and Spanish letter sounds. PA was found the best predictor of children’s ability to distinguish alphabetic text from nonalphabetic text. Finally, general cognitive ability was only indirectly associated with emergent literacy skills via PPAs. These results highlight the importance of PPAs in the early literacy development of native Spanish speaking preschool children.

This study is the latest advancement of our research aimed at best characterizing children's posttraumatic stress reactions. In a previous study, we compared existing nosologic and empirical models of PTSD dimensionality and determined the superior model was a hierarchical one with three symptom clusters (Intrusion/Active Avoidance, Numbing/Passive Avoidance, and Arousal; Anthony, Lonigan, & Hecht, 1999). In this study, we cross‐validate this model in two populations. Participants were 396 fifth graders who were exposed to either Hurricane Andrew or Hurricane Hugo. Multisample confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated the model's factorial invariance across populations who experienced traumatic events that differed in severity. These results show the model's robustness to characterize children's posttraumatic stress reactions. Implications for diagnosis, classification criteria, and an empirically supported theory of PTSD are discussed.