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Reading and Writing

An Interdisciplinary Journal

ISSN 0922-4777

Read Writ

DOI 10.1007/s11145-012-9361-z

Evidence for the early emergence of thesimple view of reading in a transparent

orthography

Panayiota Kendeou, Timothy

C. Papadopoulos & Marianna

Kotzapoulou


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Evidence for the early emergence of the simple view

of reading in a transparent orthography

Panayiota Kendeou Timothy C. Papadopoulos

Marianna Kotzapoulou

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract The main aim of the present study was to empirically test the emergence

of the Simple View of Reading (SVR) in a transparent orthography, and specifically

in Greek. To do so, we examined whether the constituent components of the SVR

could be identified in young, Greek-speaking children even before the beginning of

formal reading instruction. Our investigation focused on Kindergarten children and

examined the dissociation of decoding-related and language comprehension skills

using Exploratory Factor Analysis. All children were administered a battery ofdecoding-related and comprehension measures. The analysis demonstrated that

comprehension and decoding-related measures loaded as distinct factors in young

Greek-speaking children and that the two factors were weakly correlated. The

present findings provide important support for the validity of the SVR framework as

a model of reading skills acquisition in a language with a transparent orthography,

such as Greek.

Keywords Simple view of reading Kindergarten children Comprehension

Introduction

The Simple View of Reading (SVR; Aaron, Joshi, & Williams, 1999; Gough &

Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2000) is perhaps the most

P. Kendeou (&)

School of Health Sciences, Neapolis University Pafos, 2 Danaes Avenue, 8042 Pafos, Cyprus

e-mail: [email protected]

T. C. Papadopoulos

University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

M. Kotzapoulou

Open University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus

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Read Writ

DOI 10.1007/s11145-012-9361-z


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highly cited and used framework for describing the processes and skills involved

during reading comprehension. In the SVR, reading comprehension is described as

the product or sum of a readers word decoding (D) and listening comprehension

skills (LC). The SVR model depicts that both decoding and comprehension are

necessary for reading comprehension. Advocates of the SVR model do not discountother potential contributors to the reading process, but rather propose that decoding

and comprehension are core competencies that drive reading comprehension

experiences (Kendeou, Savage, & van den Broek, 2009; Kirby & Savage, 2008).

Research findings generally have supported the validity of the SVR in readers

ranging from 8- to 16-years old (Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005; Dreyer &

Katz,1992; Johnston & Kirby,2006; Joshi & Aaron,2000; Kirby & Savage,2008;

Savage, 2006; Vellutino, Tunmer, Jaccard & Chen,2007), and university students

with and without known reading difficulties (Savage & Wolforth, 2007). The vast

majority of this research, however, has been conducted with English-speakinglearners. It is well-established, though, that languages differ in the complexity of

their orthographies (see Ziegler & Goswami,2005for a review). On the one hand,

children who are learning to read in languages with transparent orthographies such

as Greek, Finnish, or German, rely heavily on strategies focusing on grapheme-

phoneme recoding as the relationship between graphemes and phonemes is highly

consistent (Aidinis & Nunes, 2001; Loizou & Stuart, 2003; Papadopoulos, 2001;

Porpodas,1999; Protopapas & Vlahou,2009). On the other hand, children learning

to read in languages with rather non-transparent orthographies, such as English or

Danish (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003), have to rely on larger sub-word units(such as rimes) as the reliability of smaller units (such as phonemes) is

comparatively reduced (Ziegler & Goswami,2005).

These cross-linguistic differences have implications for the development, role,

and relative contribution of phonological, word decoding, and language compre-

hension skills to childrens reading comprehension. For example, in transparent

orthographies such as Greek, Dutch and Finnish, phonological decoding skills

develop rapidly in the first years of schooling and most children acquire accurate

decoding skills by the end of first grade (de Jong & van der Leij, 1999; Lerkkanen,

Rasku-Puttonen, Aunola, & Nurmi, 2004; Leppanen, Aunola, Niemi, & Nurmi,

2008; Papadopoulos, Spanoudis, & Kendeou, 2009). In non-transparent orthogra-

phies such as English the development of phonological decoding skills, and

consequently decoding skills, is much slower (Nation & Snowling,1997; Ziegler &

Goswami,2005). It is therefore important to examine the validity of the SVR across

languages to determine whether it is general or language specific (Florit & Cain,

2011; Georgiou, Das, & Hayward, 2009).

Indeed, in a recent meta-analysis, Florit and Cain (2011) examined the validity of

the SVR for readers of English and other more transparent orthographies. This

analysis showed that the relative contribution of decoding and language compre-

hension skills on reading comprehension varied for readers of transparent and non-

transparent orthographies across development. Specifically, for readers of English,

decoding was more influential than language comprehension in the early years. For

readers of more transparent orthographies, though, the pattern reversed. The

contribution of language comprehension was more influential than that of decoding.

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These findings suggest that any conclusions in the context of the SVR for

transparent orthographies that have been drawn on the basis of findings from non-

transparent orthographies must be re-evaluated. Thus, more systematic investiga-

tions are warranted in languages with more transparent orthographies to directly

examine the applicability of findings obtained in English language.The present study is situated in the context of this literature and aims to examine

the validity of the SVR in the early years in a transparent language, and specifically

in Greek. To the best of our knowledge, the only study that tested the validity of the

SVR model in Greek is that by Protopapas, Simos, Siderides, and Mouzaki (in

press). Protopapas et al. examined patterns of covariance among measures typically

included in the evaluation of the SVR, in order to determine appropriate groupings

among measures into factors that can then be used to account for reading

comprehension performance. The sample comprised children who were already

conventional readers and had undergone several years of formal reading instruction(Grades 35). The analysis demonstrated that the latent decoding and comprehen-

sion factors were strongly correlated.

The findings by Protopapas et al. (in press) raise two important questions that

warrant further investigation, and thus we address in the present study. The first

question concerns the extent to which the two distinct factors of decoding and

listening comprehension skills that have been identified in elementary school

children are also present at an earlier age. Research in English language has

demonstrated the presence of these factors in children as young as 4-years old (e.g.,

Storch & Whitehurst,2002) but the applicability of this finding in more transparentorthographies must be examined. The second question concerns the nature of the

relation between these two factors. Even though these factors were found to be

interrelated in elementary school children (Protopapas et al.), it is unknown whether

this relation is present early on before the beginning of formal reading instruction,

or whether it develops later on and likely due to systematic reading instruction that

draws on both of these sets of skills. Research in English language has demonstrated

that these factors are related in children as young as 4-years old, albeit this relation

weakens significantly by the age of 6 (e.g., Kendeou, van den Broek, White, &

Lynch,2009; Storch & Whitehurst,2002). As noted before, and in the context of the

findings of a recent meta-analysis (Florit & Cain, 2011), the applicability of this

finding in more transparent orthographies must be examined. Thus, addressing both

of these questions will significantly extend the growing empirical work on the SVR

in different orthographies and age groups, and will have several educational

implications, particularly for the instruction and assessment of decoding and

language comprehension skills in the early years.

A main source of evidence for the SVR comes from Factor Analysis of datasets

on different measures of reading (Rose, 2006). Identifying separate decoding and

comprehension components using Factor Analysis is a strong test for the SVR

because it can demonstrate that the two components can be clearly deduced from a

set of measures and that they are differentiated (de Jong & van der Leij, 2002). In

addition, a Factor Analysis approach produces parsimonious solutions that are

generally considered to have high external validity and, as such, are likely to

replicate (Henson & Roberts, 2006; Kerlinger, 1979). For these reasons, in the

Simple view of reading

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present study we use factor analysis to examine the presence of decoding-related

and language comprehension skills as separate dimensions in Greek (as suggested

by the SVR), and explore their interrelation.

The first study to provide direct evidence for the SVR using factor analytic

techniques was a longitudinal study in a transparent language (Italian) whichdemonstrated that measures of reading accuracy and reading speed loaded on one

factor, whereas measures of reading comprehension loaded on a second factor

(Pazzaglia, Cornoldi & Tessoldi,1993). The second study to provide such evidence

was in a non-transparent language (English) and showed that three word recognition

measures (word reading accuracy with and without context, non-word reading)

loaded on one factor, whereas two text comprehension measures (narrative

listening, text reading) loaded on to a second factor in children aged between 7

and 10 years (Nation & Snowling, 1997). The third study (Kendeou et al.,2009a),

also in English language, utilized diverse measures of decoding and listeningcomprehension and was undertaken independently by two research teams in

different countries (Canada and the US); the findings demonstrated that listening

comprehension and decoding measures loaded as distinct factors in both samples of

young 4- and 6-year old English-speaking children.

Whereas direct evidence for the SVR can be obtained using factor analytic

techniques, indirect evidence can be obtained by demonstrating that different

underlying skills and abilities contribute to the development of decoding and

language comprehension skills. Such indirect evidence has been obtained in a

number of studies in English language suggesting the dissociation of decoding andcomprehension skills (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant,2004; Cutting & Scarborough,

2006; Georgiou et al.,2009; Keenan, Betjemann, & Olson,2008; Kendeou, van den

Broek, White, & Lynch, 2007; Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004;

Oakhill, Cain & Bryant,2003; Oakhill & Cain,2007). Indirect evidence for the SVR

can also be obtained by demonstrating that children can perform differentially on

these two sets of skills. For instance, research on poor readers has identified children

with good decoding but poor language comprehension skills (Cain, Oakhill, &

Lemmon, 2005; Catts, Hogan, & Fey, 2003; Nation, 2005; Nation & Snowling,

1997; Stothard & Hulme, 1992) as well as children with poor decoding but good

language comprehension skills (Adlof, Catts, & Little, 2006; Catts et al., 2003;

Spooner, Baddeley, & Gathercole, 2004).

It is important to note that in the present study we are not concerned with the

contribution of decoding and language comprehension skills in reading comprehen-

sion itself or that the extent to which young readers can perform differentially on these

two sets of skills. Rather, we are concerned with the extent to which the constituent

components of the SVR can be identified (i.e., form latent factors) in Greek-speaking

learners before the beginning of formal reading instruction and their respective

relation (i.e., whether they begin to develop interrelated as the study by Protopapas

et al. (in press) would suggest or whether they develop independently from one

another). With respect to the decoding component, we considered decoding-related

measures that were developmentally appropriate for our sample of pre-readers

(Tunmer & Chapman, in press). These decoding-related measures were vocabulary,

phonological awareness, and letter identification. With respect to the language

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comprehension component, we considered listening comprehension measures

pertinent to the Causal Network Theory (CNT; see Kendeou et al., 2009b; Mackie,

1980; Trabasso, van den Broek, & Suh,1989; van den Broek,1990). These listening

comprehension measures were recall of highly connected events in a narrative, recall

of main episodes of a narrative, and answers to comprehension questions.

Method

Participants

Sixty-seven children (30 males and 37 females) participated in this study. The

children were recruited from five different Kindergartens. They were native Greek

speakers with no reported history of speech, language, or hearing difficulties. Themean age of the group was 5 years and 6 months old (range 5;0 to 6;0). Almost half

of the parents of the participating group were college or university graduates

(45.4%) and the remaining were high school graduates (55.6%). School and parental

consent for participation in the study was obtained for all children prior to testing.

In Kindergarten, the children attended a program including mostly social

activities and games with a semi-formal cognitive and linguistic training. In relation

to language and literacy development activities, children became aware of the range

of books and tapes/cds available for them while teachers were enhancing the

opportunities for learning and pleasure from reading books from the childs part.The development of listening skills was also of major importance while the children

were read stories. Children were also constantly introduced to new vocabulary in the

context of listening comprehension. Drawing and pre-writing activities were also

included in on a daily basis. Finally, rhyming and odd-out-word activities at which

the child had to identify the word that differed from two or three others in its first or

ending syllable (or sound) were occasionally practised. Generally, the curriculum

aims concentrated on aiding children to develop awareness of print and enjoy

participating in literacy activities without formal reading instruction.

Materials

A narrative was used as part of the narrative comprehension assessment, presented

aurally (i.e., Listening comprehension). Two subtests from the Early Reading Skills

Assessment Battery (ERS-AB; Papadopoulos, Spanoudis, & Kendeou, 2008),

phoneme elision and phoneme blending, were used to assess phonological

awareness. These tasks have undergone extensive validation (Papadopoulos,

Kendeou, & Spanoudis, in press; Papadopoulos et al., 2009). The letter identifi-

cation subtest from the Dyslexia Early Screening Test-2 battery (DEST-2; Nicolson

& Fawcett, 2004; Greek standardization by Papadopoulos et al., 2008) was

administered to test letter knowledge. Finally, the Vocabulary subtest from the

Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R; Wechs-

ler,1990) was used to assess vocabulary knowledge. More information about each

measure follows.


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Listening comprehension

For the listening comprehension task, one narrative was presented aurally (on an

audio-tape) to the participants. The story, Who listens to Melpo?, was an age

appropriate narrative but not known to the children. The entire story, when audio-taped, was 7 min long. The story was recorded into a WAV computer file by a

female speaker at normal rate (160 wpm) and played to the participants using

Windows Media Player. Eight simple, line-drawn pictures were made to accompany

the story in a booklet form. The pictures alone did not convey any major points from

the storys plot. The story had a standard, but complex structure in which the

protagonist made several attempts to achieve her desired goal. Participants were

asked to listen to the story while the experimenter flipped through the accompanying

pictures. When they had finished listening, children were asked to retell everything

they remembered from the story (for details with regard to data recorded in this tasksee Procedure section below). The Cronbachs alpha for these tasks in this study was

0.86.

Vocabulary

The Vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of

Intelligence-Revised (WPPSI-R; Wechsler,1990) was administered as a measure of

receptive vocabulary. This task has been initially adapted in Greek by Papadopo-

ulos, Charalambous, Kanari, and Loizou (2004). This subtest consists of two parts.

On the first part, the child is required to name a pictured object (7 items). On the

second part, the child is asked to provide verbal definitions for words presented

orally by the examiner (23 items). On this part, participants answers reflecting a

relevant general definition earn 2 points, whereas responses reflecting only one or

more common properties of an item earn 1 point. The task is discontinued after four

consecutive mistakes. The total score based on the sum of 2- and 1-point responses

is the participants final score. The Cronbachs alpha for this task in this study was

0.73.

Phoneme elision

This task was an adaptation of the work by Wagner, Torgesen, Laughon, Simmons,

and Rashotte (1993). In this task, children were asked to repeat a word after deleting

an identified phoneme. The targeted phonemes were either vowels or consonants

and their position varied across items. After deleting the target phoneme, the

remaining phonemes formed a word (e.g., say the word/sx9qa/;/tora/; now, after

deleting the sound/t/?/x9qa/;/ora/; time). The task included 15 testing items andwas discontinued after four failures. Participants score was the total number of

correct responses. Papadopoulos et al., (in press) reported internal consistency

coefficient to be 0.93 in Kindergarten. The Cronbachs alpha for this task in this

study was 0.95.

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Phoneme blending

This task was designed to assess phoneme blending skills. Audio prompts presented

the sounds of two-to-six sound words separately, and the child was asked to orally

blend them into a word. The childs response was recorded as correct when s/hereproduced all the sounds in the final word. Words were progressively more

difficult. The first four words consisted of two- to four- phoneme segments that were

of CV or CVC structure (e.g.,/ux1/;/fos/; light). The more difficult items contained

more complex consonant clusters such as CCV (e.g.,/rsola/;/stoma/; mouth). The

component sounds of each word were spoken every 500 ms. The task included 15

testing items and was discontinued after four failures. Participants score was the

total number of correct responses. Papadopoulos et al., (in press) reported internal

consistency coefficient to be 0.91 in Kindergarten. The Cronbachs alpha for this

task in this study also was 0.91.

Letter identification

The Letter Identification subtest from the Dyslexia Early Screening Test-2 battery

(DEST-2; Nicolson & Fawcett, 2004) was administered. This test was selected

because it provides information about a childs ability to identify different and

relatively frequent letters in Greek (3 vowels and 7 consonants in total). The letters

are presented to the participants on a single page with large font size (Arial 96) in

lowercase. Participants are asked to provide the sound or name of the letter.Participants score was the total number of correct responses. The Cronbachs alpha

for this task in this study was 0.90.

Procedure

Participants were tested individually in a session lasting approximately 45 min,

between February and April. All testing took place during school hours in a quiet

room at schools by a graduate student. Before the beginning of the study the

graduate student was trained in test administration and data recording. The entire

session was audio-taped. First, children completed the vocabulary assessment. Next,

children listened to the aural story. The children were instructed to listen closely so

they could answer questions after the story was over. While listening to the story,

children looked through the pictures that accompanied the story. Immediately after

the story was completed, the experimenter asked the children to, Tell everything

you remember from the story from the beginning. When children finished

recalling, they were asked ten comprehension questions. Finally, children completed

the phonological awareness and letter identification measures.

Coding of the listening comprehension data

Prior to data collection, two researchers analyzed the narrative and parsed it into

events (generally defined as subject-verb phrases). The aurally presented story had

146 events divided in 11 different episodes. The causal structure of the narrative


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was then determined. Causal relations between all events in the story were

identified according to principles of causality (Kendeou et al., 2009a, 2009b ;

Mackie, 1980; Trabasso, van den Broek, & Suh, 1989; van den Broek, 1990; van

den Broek et al., 2005). The childrens responses to the free recall were transcribed

verbatim from the audiotapes of the experimental sessions and were then parsedinto events. As in the parsing of the narratives, these events were generally subject-

verb phrases. Each recalled event was coded according to the event that it most

closely matched in the corresponding narrative. Recalled events that did not match

an event in the story were coded separately and were not included in the following

analyses. Two raters coded the transcripts. 20 percent of the transcripts were coded

jointly by both raters to establish and practice the coding scheme. An additional 20

percent of the transcripts were coded independently by both raters to determine

inter-rater reliability. Inter-rater agreement was very good, K = 0.80, p\0.01.

Two measures of narrative comprehension were calculated based on these data.One measure was high-connection recall: The total number of unique story events

that participants included in their free recall that were central to the story structure

(i.e., had a high number of causal connections; see van den Broek, Lorch, &

Thurlow,1996for a review). The Cronbachs alpha for this task in this study was

0.86. The second measure consisted of the total number of episodes recalled. The

Cronbachs alpha for this task in this study was 0.82.

Correct responses to the comprehension questions were also determined prior to

data collection based on the causal structure of the narrative. Participants answers

to the comprehension questions were coded either as correct (2 points), partiallycorrect (1 point), or incorrect (0 point). The Cronbachs alpha for this task in this

study was 0.83.

Results

Preliminary analyses

Preliminary inspection of the data using conventional approaches (Tabachnick &Fidell, 2007) suggested no deviations from normality. The means and standard

deviations of all measures are presented in Table1.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics

of decoding related and

comprehension measures

a The minimum score for all

measures was zero (0)

Measuresa M SD Max

Phoneme elision 4.09 5.18 15

Phoneme blending 5.54 4.61 15

Letter identification 4.16 3.38 10

Vocabulary 8.34 4.01 17

Listening comprehensionrecall 7.87 6.10 22

Listening comprehensionepisodes 4.21 2.92 10

Listening comprehensionquestions 7.67 4.54 17

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Correlation analyses were then explored. These are reported in Table2.

Inspection of these coefficients showed that there were significant associations

between phonological awareness, letter identification, and to some extent with

vocabulary (with rranging from 0.28 to 0.51). Listening comprehension measures

were also significantly interrelated and associated with vocabulary. Among the three

listening comprehension measures, only answers to comprehension questions was

significantly correlated with the phonological and letter identification measures

(with r ranging from 0.30 to 0.41). These patterns are broadly consistent with theSVR perspective that decoding-related skills and listening comprehension skills in

Greek are at least to some extent separable in young children.

Exploratory factor analysis

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed to explore the model of Simple

View of Reading. Even though we expected to identify the two constituent

components of the SVR, we avoided the use of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

because the CFA model is much more restrictive than that of EFA, and most experts

recommend that EFA be used instead of CFA when sample size is small (Comrey &

Lee, 1992). Furthermore, it is possible to use EFA in a confirmatory manner

(Bandalos & Finney, 2010). Principal Component Analysis with a promax rotation

was applied to data. We applied an oblique rotation in which it is assumed that the

factors are correlated. We chose to apply an oblique rather than orthogonal rotation

because if the factors are not correlated, an orthogonal solution will result. The total

matrix sampling adequacy for factor analysis was sufficient (KMO = 0.69) and

Bartletts Test of Sphericity indicated the presence of factor structure,

v2(21) = 193.43, p\ 0.001. Kaisers criterion that only factors with eigenvalues

greater than one are retained (Child, 1990) was applied. The analysis yielded a two-

factor solution involving 7 items that explained 65.57% of variance. Because the

sample size is considered small for such analysis, we examined communalities and

structure coefficients to determine whether the solution was acceptable. Solutions

with several high structure coefficients (as in the current solution; range 0.590.95)

Table 2 Relations among decoding and comprehension measures

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 Phoneme elision 0.496** 0.285* 0.233 0.097 0.121 0.300*

2 Phoneme blending 0.506** 0.246* 0.240 0.233 0.407**

3 Letter identification 0.425** 0.210 0.159 0.370**

4 Vocabulary 0.335** 0.253* 0.539**

5 Listening comprehension

recall

0.462** 0.580**


episodes

0.862**


questions

* p\

0.05; ** p\

0.01


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do not require large sample sizes (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Communalities also

were acceptable (range 0.430.91). The factor solution is presented in Table 3. The

two factors extracted were labeled as Decoding Related Skills and Comprehension

Skills. The factor Decoding Related Skills explained 20.61% of the variance and

comprised the two phonological awareness measures, letter identification, and

vocabulary (with Cronbach alpha equal to 0.69). The factor Comprehension Skills

explained 44.96% of the variance and comprised the three listening comprehension

measures (with Cronbach alpha equal to 0.80). The correlation of the two factors

was r =0.371, p\0.01.

Discussion

The main aim of the present study was to empirically test the validity of the SVR in

a transparent language, and specifically in Greek. To do so, we examined whether

the constituent components of the SVR could be identified in young, Greek-

speaking children even before the beginning of formal reading instruction. Our

investigation focused on Kindergarten children and examined the dissociation of

decoding-related and language comprehension skills using Exploratory Factor

Analysis.

Perhaps the most important finding of the present study is that at an early age and

before children become conventional readers in a transparent language such as

Greek, the decodingrelated and comprehension factors not only form distinct

clusters, but are also weakly related. This finding is consistent with that in English-

speaking children. In English it has been demonstrated that these two sets of skills

also form separate factors at an early age and these factors are uncorrelated or weaklycorrelated in Kindergarten (Kendeou et al., 2009b; Oakhill et al., 2003; Paris &

Paris,2001,2003; van den Broek et al., 1996; Vellutino et al., 2007; Whitehurst &

Lonigan,1998). Also, this finding significantly extends the work by Protopapas et al.,

(in press) by showing that distinct clusters of comprehension and decoding-related

Table 3 Structure coefficients

for principal components

analysis

Only loadings above 0.45 aredisplayed

Measure Component 1 Component 2

Decoding-

related skills

Comprehension

skills

Phoneme elision 0.71

Phoneme blending 0.80

Letter identification 0.76

Vocabulary 0.59


recall

0.95


episodes

0.91


questions

0.72

Percent of variance 20.61% 44.96%

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skills are present at a much earlier age than previously shown in Greek and,

importantly, they are weakly related. As children get older and with systematic

reading instruction, these factors become more strongly correlated, although they are

still separable. This finding is consistent across different languages. As children get

more practice opportunities in reading, both their decoding and comprehension skillsimprove contributing further to their development in reading comprehension

(Tunmer & Hoover, 1993). This reciprocal relation between the constituent

components of the SVR and reading comprehension results in increased shared

variance between the constituent components, and thus higher correlations in older

children (Tunmer & Chapman, in press).

Consistent with the findings of previous research is also the role of vocabulary in

the SVR (Kendeou et al., 2009a). The role of vocabulary in numerous studies that

explored the constituent components of the SVR has been difficult to isolate

primarily because, as noted in the intercorrelations in this and other studies (e.g.,Ouellette & Beers,2010; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002), vocabulary measures tend to

correlate with both decoding and language comprehension component skills. In the

present study, vocabulary loaded with the decoding-related skill measures even

though the current sample consisted of pre-readers and the vocabulary test we used

did not involve reading. There are at least two potential theoretical accounts of this

finding that bring into the foreground issues of conceptualization and measurement

of vocabulary knowledge. The first account comes from the lexical quality

hypothesis (Perfetti, 1985; Perfetti & Hart, 2001). Lexical quality is characterized

by good phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations that supportefficient execution of lower-level processes and, in turn, better text comprehension

(Perfetti & Hart,2002). The main premise of this view is that the efficient execution

of lower-level processes that support lexical access frees cognitive resources and

allows the reader to engage in higher-order processes. In the present study, measures

of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations loaded together on the

decoding-related factor, a finding consistent with the full specification of word

constituent information as hypothesized by the lexical quality hypothesis.

The second account comes from the set for variability hypothesis (Tunmer &

Chapman,2011). Set for variability is defined as the ability to recognize words from

partial decoding and was suggested as an essential skill for learning to read in

English (Venezky, 1999). Recently, Tunmer and Chapman demonstrated that

vocabulary influences indirectly the development of decoding skills through set for

variability. Set for variability is also relevant to initial reading development in more

transparent orthographies than English (Elbro, de Jong, Houter, & Nielsen, 2011)

and may explain the interrelations of vocabulary and decoding skills in the early

years; interrelations that have been observed in the present study and resulted in the

vocabulary measure loading with the decoding-related skills.

It should be noted that the aforementioned accounts for the role of vocabulary in

the SVR are not competing hypotheses. They do highlight, however, the complex

role of vocabulary in the context of theoretical models of reading comprehension, in

general, and in the SVR in particular. At any rate, more research is warranted to

better understand the role of vocabulary, as well as the particular demands different

vocabulary measures pose to the young reader (Tannenbaum, Torgesen & Wagner,


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2006; Ouellette,2006; Pearson, Hiebert, & Kamil,2007). This need to explore more

systematically the role of vocabulary in reading comprehension has been also

reported in the recent work by Kendeou, Papadopoulos, and Spanoudis (in press)

who examined the role of vocabulary on different reading comprehension tests in

young readers. The findings of this study showed that vocabulary has a differentialcontribution to different reading comprehension tests. These findings highlight, yet

again, issues of conceptualization and measurement.

The current sets of findings add to the growing empirical work on the SVR in

different languages and age groups and have several educational implications,

particularly for early years. The SVR provides a conceptual framework for

designing appropriate teaching practices that target both decoding and comprehen-

sion skills (e.g., Aaron, 1991; Kendeou et al., 2005, 2007; Oakhill et al., 2003;

Savage,2001,2006). For instance, the separation of these skills enables teachers to

understand what they need to teach about decoding and comprehension within abroad curriculum. Indeed, in the United Kingdom, the SVR model has been adopted

as the theoretical basis of the revised national curricular advice to all schools in

England (DFES,2006).

Another implication of the current findings derives from the measures we used to

assess the language comprehension component of the SVR. Childrens compre-

hension was measured by assessing the quantity and quality of their representation

of the narrative they listened to, in terms of the extent to which their recall focused

on the events and facts that had many connections to other events and facts, and in

terms of their ability to answer comprehension questions at different levels ofcomplexity. In principle, any authentic oral narrative could be used, as long as it

contains both simple and complex relations. Assessing childrens comprehension

following this approach has considerable psychological validity and reflects the fact

that creating coherence is at the center of successful comprehension (Graesser,

Singer, & Trabasso,1994; Kendeou, Bohn-Gettler, White, & van den Broek, 2008;

Kintsch,1998; Oakhill & Cain,2007; Rapp, van den Broek, McMaster, Kendeou,&

Espin,2007). A method for assessing comprehension skills in young children such

as this is likely to be useful not only for researchers but also for teachers to

determine whether their teaching practices are effective and how individual children

progress.

Besides the important findings of the present study, possible limitations of our

investigation need to be acknowledged as well. First, the focus on children who are

not yet proficient readers did not allow us to obtain data on word reading measures.

As a result, the decoding-related component comprised only of pre-reading or code-

related skills (Storch & Whitehurst, 2002) that are known to support word reading

such as phonological awareness, letter identification, and vocabulary (Perfetti &

Hart,2001). Second, and even though in the present study we were not concerned

with the contribution of decoding and language comprehension skills in reading

comprehension itself, it would have been interesting to explore the predictive

validity of these two sets of skills in later reading comprehension. This would

necessitate a longitudinal investigation. That the constituent components of the SVR

can be identified in young, Greek speaking learners, though, forms the basis for a

future investigation in this direction.

P. Kendeou et al.

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