Abstract of

Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors of Reading: The Role of Metalinguistic and Short-Term Memory Skills

Valerie Muter

Margaret Snowling

The relationship between phonological awareness, short-term memory, grammatical awareness, and reading accuracy was investigated in a follow-up study of 34 9-year-olds originally studied as preschoolers. The best concurrent predictor set for reading accuracy at age 9 was grammatic knowledge, phoneme awareness, and speech rate, which together explained nearly 90% of the variance in reading skill. Phoneme deletion, nonword repetition, and letter knowledge measures taken at ages 5 and 6 predicted reading skill at age 9, while rhyme awareness proved a poor long-term predictor.

Abstract from Muter, V., & Snowling, M. (1998). Concurrent and Longitudinal Predictors of Reading: The Role of Metalinguistic and Short-Term Memory Skills. Reading Research Quarterly, 33(3), 320–337. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.33.3.4