The present study aimed to extend understanding of preschoolers' early spelling using the Vygotskian ("Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes," Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1978) paradigm of child development. We assessed the contribution of maternal spelling support in predicting children's…

This longitudinal study assessed the literacy development of native Arabic-speaking children from kindergarten to the end of first grade, focusing on the role of home literacy activities (mother-child shared book reading and joint writing). The contribution of these activities in kindergarten to children's reading and writing at the end of…

This study assessed the effects of three different intervention programs on low-SES mother-child joint activities and on their kindergarten-age children's progress in early literacy and language. Parents in three groups (119 mothers, 5 fathers) were coached to mediate child learning, respectively, in: interactive storybook reading, writing, or…

In the present study, maternal Pinyin mediation and its relations with young Chinese children's word reading and word writing development were explored. At time 1, 43 Mainland Chinese children and their mothers were videotaped on a task in which children were asked to write 12 words in Pinyin (a phonological coding system used in Mainland China as…

Preschoolers' metalinguistic and visual capabilities may be associated with the writing system of their culture. We examined patterns of performance in phonological awareness, naming of letters, morphological awareness, and visual-spatial relations, in 5-year-old native speakers of Spanish (n = 43), Hebrew (n = 40), and Cantonese (n = 63) and the…

The study examined the differential contributions on vocabulary and alphabetic skills of three literacy programs: (a) storybook reading program; (b) alphabetic skills program; and (c) a combined program. It was expected that storybook reading would enhance primarily vocabulary while alphabetic skills training would promote primarily alphabetic…

The current study follows up on Aram and Levin's (2001, "Cognitive Development," 16, 831?852) analysis of the role of maternal writing mediation among low SES Israeli kindergartners. That study's main finding indicated that the quality of maternal writing mediation correlated concurrently with kindergartners' literacy skills after controlling for…