Contribution of cognitive abilities and homeliteracy environment to reading fluency inJapaneseTomoe InomataUniversity of Tsukubainomata@kansei.tsukuba.ac.jpCo-authors: Akira Uno (University of Tsukuba),Atsushi Sakai (Tokyo Metropolitan University),Noriko Haruhara (Mejiro University)The home literacy environment has beenreported to contribute to children’s earlyliteracy skills. However, little is known about theeffect of home literacy on later school readingachievement. In a three-year longitudinal study,we investigated cognitive and environmentalpredictors of reading fluency in Grade 2, anddevelopment of reading fluency from Grade 1through Grade 2. Participants comprised 121children from two kindergartens. Phonologicalawareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN),visual cognition, receptive vocabulary, andHiragana character reading were assessedduring the middle of kindergarten. Parentsfilled a questionnaire on their home literacyenvironment: the frequency of book reading andparent teaching.Later, in Grade 1, the children’s cognitive abilitiesand home environments were re-assessed. Thereading fluency of Hiragana words, nonwords,and paragraphs were measured in Grades 1 and2. The children’s intelligence was also tested inGrade 2.Scores in RAN, phonological awareness, andfrequency of book reading were significantpredictors for all reading fluency tasks in Grade2. However, when previous Grade 1 readingfluency was taken into account, the contributionof cognitive and environmental variablesbecame insignificant in word and non-wordreading fluency tasks, whereas book readingfrequency remained a significant predictor ofparagraph reading fluency in Grade 2. Thesefindings suggest that in addition to phonologicalawareness and naming speed, book readingmay also contribute to development of readingfluency.
