Development of Young Readers' Phonological Processing Abilities

In a cross-sectional study of 184 kindergarten and 2nd grade students, confirmatory factor analysis of a battery of phonological and control tasks were used to compare alternative models of young readers' phonological processing abilities. We found evidence for 5 distinct but correlated phonological processing abilities. Latent phonological processing abilities were more highly correlated with general cognitive ability than previous reports would suggest, although they accounted for variance in word recognition independent of general cognitive ability. The results of this study, coupled with those of a previous study of prereaders, suggest that phonological abilities are best conceptualized as relatively stable and coherent individual difference attributes, as opposed to relatively unstable measures of reading-related knowledge.