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Copyright of Education & Science / Egitim ve Bilim is the property of Turkish Education Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study, we aimed to determine the early cognitive and home environmental predictors of reading in Turkish‐speaking children. A total of 362 children participated in the study. We monitored the children for 3 years and assessed the home environmental variables and cognitive skills in kindergarten, reading fluency at the end of the first grade, and reading comprehension at the end of the second grade. We found that home literacy environment and socioeconomic status predicted early literacy skills in kindergarten as they also predicted reading fluency and reading comprehension through early literacy in later years. In addition, we found that phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming predicted reading fluency, while language and verbal working memory predicted reading comprehension. The results of the study showed us that it is important to consider reading and reading comprehension in Turkish‐speaking children holistically, together with cognitive skills and home environmental variables. Practitioner Points: Early cognitive and home environmental factors affect the development of reading and reading comprehension in Turkish‐speaking children.Early home literacy environment and socioeconomic status predict reading success through early cognitive factors.Phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and rapid naming are essential variables for the development of reading fluency in Turkish, a highly transparent language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Education & Science / Egitim ve Bilim is the property of Turkish Education Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Faculty of Educational Sciences is the property of Ankara University, Faculty of Educational Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Working memory, which is an important determinant of learning capacity, is a structure that affects the acquisition and development process of many academic skills, especially reading and writing. On the other hand, it is stated that the effect of working memory on these skills differs according to grade levels. The effect of the verbal and visual components of working memory creates different effects in different dimensions such as fluent reading and comprehension, and the orthographic characteristics of a language are an important determinant on the level of this effect. From this point of view, this study aims to examine longitudinally the prediction of first- and second-grade participants' reading fluency and reading comprehension performances in terms of their verbal and visual working memory performances. These participants were evaluated in the kindergarten in a transparent orthography with an extremely high letter-sound relationship like Turkish. The research was carried out in schools that were randomly assigned from each stratum, representing the lower-middle and upper socioeconomic levels in the province of Ankara. The participants in the study consisted of 450 children (224 girls, 250 boys) who were aged five (Mean= 66.29 months, SD= 3.91) at the beginning of the study and who were not diagnosed with any cognitive and/or sensory disability. Measurements of the working memory performance of the participants in the kindergarten were conducted using the Working Memory Scale (WMS), and the measurements of the reading fluency and reading comprehension performances in the first and second grades were carried out using the Literacy Evaluation Battery (LAB). The results obtained from the study, in which working memory measurements were determined to predict reading fluency and reading comprehension skills, using the structural equation model, revealed that reading fluency and reading comprehension performances increased from the first grade to the second grade and from the fall semester to the spring semester at each grade level. The results also showed that the verbal and visual working memory performance in the kindergarten contributed to the reading fluency and reading comprehension success of the first and second grades in the fall and spring semesters at different levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated endogenous and exogenous predictors of early literacy in Turkish-speaking children. Whether children's language and working memory performances (as the endogenous factors) and home literacy environment (as the exogenous factor) in the beginning of kindergarten predict the children's current and year-end early literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, receptive and expressive vocabulary) was examined. The participants consisted of 441 kindergarten children. Results showed that language development, working memory, and home reading environment predicted children's both current and year-end phonological awareness. Language and home writing activities were significant predictors of the year-end letter knowledge. Working memory was a significant predictor for both the current and year-end letter knowledge. Language, working memory and home reading environment significantly predicted the acquisition of receptive and expressive vocabulary. In conclusion, results suggest that each of the early literacy skills is related to both the developmental characteristics of children and their home literacy environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although several studies show that phonological awareness predicts reading performance, longitudinal results in different socioeconomic levels are not clear enough. This study aimed to examine to what extent the phonological awareness skills of Turkish-speaking children coming from different socioeconomic levels are predictive of later reading performance. Children's phonological awareness was assessed in three time points including in the fall and spring semesters of kindergarten and in the beginning of first grade while reading performance was assessed at the end fall semester in first grade. A total of 451 children participated in all assessments. Three regression models were tested for the analyses. The results showed that phonological awareness skills assessed during kindergarten and in the beginning of first grade predicted reading performance in first grade in children from all socioeconomic levels, and predictive power of phonological awareness skills were higher in the spring of kindergarten compared to other assessment points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ozel Egitim Dergisi is the property of Ankara University, Faculty of Educational Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study, perception of affect via nonverbal cues was investigated in children with learning disabilities comparing to their peers with typical development. The participants were third, fourth, and fifth graders consisting 120 children in total. The relational method of screening was used in the study. Data were gathered by using the Test of Perception of Affect Via Nonverbal Cues (TPANC) developed by the researchers. The test had four subtests including mimics, posture/gestures, voice, and social stories with each examining perception of nonverbal cues related to six different emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, amazement, and disgust). One-Way-Analysis of Variance was used to analyze the data. Results showed that the performance of children with learning disabilities in perceiving nonverbal cues of affect was significantly lower than their peers with typical developments in all subtests. Significant differences were found between children with learning disabilities and typical development in third and fourth grades. No significant differences were found between the performances of boys and girls with learning disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]