Onochie Quintanilla, E. , Simpson, I. & Sylvia , D. C.
Departamento de Psicologia Evolutiva y de la Educación, Universidad de Granada
Letter knowledge (LK), phonological awareness (PA) and naming speed are important predictors of reading skill with perhaps phonological awareness being the most important (Adams, 1990; Kirby, Parrila & Pfeiffer, 2003; Lundberg, 1991; Stanovich, 1991; Torgesen et al., 1999). It has been argued that naming speed might be more important, and that Phonological Awareness might lose predictive power, in transparent writing systems compared to opaque languages. Few studies exploring this issue have been carried out in Spanish, a highly transparent writing system. The aim of this study was to determine whether naming speed is an important predictor of reading fluency in Spanish, in comparison to PA and LK. In this longitudinal study 190 native Spanish speakers from Granada were monitored for two years. Phonological awareness, letter knowledge, naming speed and IQ were assessed in the last year of kindergarten (mean age 5;8, range 5;3-6;2), the beginning of first grade (mean age 6;5, range 5;11-6;10) and the beginning of second grade (mean age 7;5, range 6;11-7;10). Results revealed that all three were significant predictors of reading fluency at the beginning of first grade. However the predictive power of PA decreased at the beginning of second grade. In contrast, naming speed uniquely explained a larger amount of variance at the beginning of second grade than it did at the beginning of first grade, while LK roughly maintained its predictive power. These results agree with findings obtained in studies carried out in other transparent languages. PA looses predictive power in writing systems with more regular grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence. In contrast naming speed becomes more effective in predicting individual differences in reading fluency, compared to PA, over a 2 year period.