Individual variation in early word decodingduring incremental phonics instructionMoniek Schaars, Eliane Segers, Ludo VerhoevenRadboud University, Netherlands m.schaars@pwo.ru.nlThe purpose of this longitudinal study wasto unravel the individual variation in earlydevelopmental trajectories during the first yearof systematic incremental phonics instruction.In a representative sample, 984 Dutch childrenwere exposed to incremental subsets ofgrapheme-phoneme correspondences in 6consecutive blocks of 3 weeks of phonicsinstruction. Thereafter, 4 blocks of explicitinstruction of orthographic rules and patternsfollowed. Word decoding was monitored every3 weeks and standardized tests of simple andcomplex word decoding was conducted twicea year. Within the large cohort, we selected asubsample of 73 children with a genetic familiarrisk for dyslexia and 73 age- and school matchedchildren without known genetic risk.Structural equation modeling showed highindividual stability in the development of earlyword decoding efficiency with a strong transitionfrom the phase during which alphabeticprinciple was mastered towards a moreconsolidated phase of orthographic reading.Phonemic awareness, lexical retrieval, andverbal and visual short term memory measuredin kindergarten were found to be predictive forearly word decoding development. Analyzingthe subsamples indicated that children at riskhave a genetic disadvantage for reading fromthe very beginning of learning to read. Thisstudy highlights the importance of fine grainedattention to the early development of reading.We discuss the contribution of our findingsto the early identification of later readingproblems
