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Associative learning has been identified as one of several non-linguistic processes involved in reading acquisition. However, it has not been established whether it is an independent process that contributes to reading performance on its own or whether it is a process that is embedded in other linguistic skills (e.g., phonological awareness or phonological memory) and, therefore, contributing to reading performance indirectly. Research has shown that performance on tasks assessing associative learning, e.g., paired-associate learning (PAL) tasks, is lower in children with specific reading difficulties compared to typical readers. We explored the differential associations of two distinct verbal–visual PAL tasks (the Bala Bbala Graphogame, BBG, and a Foreign Language Learning Task, FLLT) with reading skills (word reading and pseudo-word decoding), controlling for phonological awareness, rapid naming, and letter and digit span in children at risk for reading disabilities and their typically developing peers. Our study sample consisted of 110 children living in rural Zambia, ranging in age from 7 to 18 years old (48.1% female). Multivariate analyses of covariance were used to explore the group differences in reading performance. Repeated-measures ANCOVA was used to examine children's learning across the PAL tasks. The differential relationships between both PAL tasks and reading performance were explored via structural equation modeling. The main result was that the children at risk for reading difficulties had lower performance on both PAL tasks. The BBG was a significant predictor for both word reading and pseudo-word decoding, whereas the FLLT—only for word reading. Performance on the FLLT partially mediated the association between phonological awareness and word reading. These results illustrate the partial independence of associative learning from other reading-related skills; the specifics of this relationship vary based on the type of PAL task administered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The aim of the longitudinal intervention study was to build a model of predictive values of reading fluency in three contrastive reading groups: remedial and computer-assisted remedial reading intervention, and mainstream instruction, to identify the most effective type of intervention for children with different profiles of compromised pre-reading skills. The participants were 7-year-old Finnish school beginners (N =166). Two remedial interventions took place in four weekly sessions of 45min over a period of 28weeks in Grade 1. For a child with deficits in the core pre-reading skills (letter knowledge, phonological awareness or rapid automatized naming), the computer-assisted remedial intervention would be the most successful in remediating reading fluency in the transparent Finnish language. Furthermore, children in the computer-assisted intervention were able to reach the average level of the mainstream children by the end of Grade 2. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]