An abundance of research has established that phonological awareness skills are important prerequisites for early reading acquisition (for a review, see Melby-Lervåg et al., 2012). Early develop­ment of phonological awareness implies that a child moves from implicit to explicit control of the sound structure of language, and this explicit control is critical when a child learns to understand and handle the alphabetic principle (e.g., Caravolas et al., 2013; Lundberg et al., 2010). Accordingly, there has been a long tradition of research on phonological training to prevent failure to acquire reading skills. Early examples of such studies are Bradley and Bryant (1983) and Lundberg, Frost and Petersen (1988), and results from later training studies have been summarized in several meta-analyses (e.g., Bus & Van Ijzendoorn, 1999, National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). However, even though the results of the training studies show positive effects, Torgesen (2000) found that around two to six percent of the participants in phonological interventions could be defined as “treatment resisters”. Thus, some children do not grasp the idea of phonemes as discrete entities, and they do not seem to enhance their phonological skills to an acceptable level by the training.

Most phonological interventions have been carried out in combination with, or just before, formal reading instruction starts, and studies have typically investigated development over short periods (Kjeldsen et al., 2019). In the present study phonological awareness training was carried out when children were four and five years old (school starts at age 7 in Sweden). The intention was to begin the study at this early stage when children’s explicit awareness of the structure of speech starts to emerge (Wolff & Gustafsson, 2015; Dodd & Gillon, 2001). The training addressed different aspects of phonological awareness, gradually moving from games and exercises with morphemes and syllables to phonemes. Explicit training of phoneme/grapheme mapping (National Reading Panel, 2000) was later introduced when children were six years old, one year before formal reading instruction started. This training was given to all children regardless of whether they belonged to the experimental or control group. Thus, since everyone received the six-year-old training, the potential effects in this study are derived from the early training at ages 4 and 5.

General fluid intelligence (Gf) is a core concept in the field of intelligence. It is interpreted as the capacity to solve novel, complex problems. Gf is highly correlated with phonological awareness in 4-year-old children (Wolff & Gustafsson, 2015), and both phonology and Gf have been found to relate to early reading ability. de Jong & van der Leij (1999) found that when Gf was controlled for, the relation between phonology and reading decreased, and the direct effect of Gf on reading decreased over time. These findings support the hypothesis that the influence of Gf on early reading skills is mediated through the development of phonological awareness. Thus, we may expect that children with high Gf typically will have a more favorable development of phonological awareness skills. One important question here is if the phonological training will decrease or increase this putative influence.

The research questions are: 1) Does structured phonological awareness training starting at the age of 4 affect reading related skills ten years later in grade 8? and 2) Are there differential effects of phonological awareness training as a function of children’s cognitive abilities? The present study thus aims at extending on the rich knowledge of effects of preventive phonological interventions preceding reading instruction. As to our knowledge there are very few previous studies which investigate long-term effects of phonological awareness training during a ten-year period.

The participants (N=364) were recruited from 58 preschools in 8 municipalities. The participating preschools were situated in rural as well as urban regions, approximately representative of the Swedish population. Also, non-native Swedish speaking children (n=38) were included. The preschools were to have at least three children who could form a group, and who were between 3 and 10 months and 4 years 4 months old. The preschool groups were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n=138) or to a control group (n=226). The groups comprised three to six children. In case there were two groups at the same preschool, both groups were assigned to the same condition. The experimental group received phonological awareness training for six weeks at the age of 4, and for six weeks at the age of 5. Before the intervention at age 4, (t1) a pre-test was given assessing Gf and phonological awareness; four, five and ten years later in grade 2 (t2), grade 3 (t3) and grade 8 (t4) reading related skills were assessed. Informed consent was obtained from all parents before t1. The method applied in the current study will be Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and the models will be estimated with the Mplus 7.4 program (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2012). The analyses will be carried out investigating direct and indirect effects of early phonological training. There are some obvious advantages of using SEM in the present study. It allows for estimation of relations between multiple dependent variables, and for reciprocal and indirect effects. SEM also allows for the use of manifest and latent variables in the same model. The models will be estimated with the Robust Maximum Likelihood (MLR) estimator in Mplus 7. In order to take the cluster-sampling design of the study into account, the so-called ‘complex option’ in Mplus will be used to obtain cluster-robust estimates of standard errors. Chi-square, Root Mean Square of Approximation (RMSEA) with confidence intervals, Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and Standardised Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) will be reported.

Previous findings in the project (Wolff & Gustafsson, 2022) demonstrated that early phonological awareness training preceding the ordinary kindergarten training improves children’s further development of phonological skills. Further, the training affected all the reading related measures in grades 2 and 3 (effect sizes running from d =0.37−0.54) and showed to be particularly beneficial for at-risk children. Bearing in mind the phonological training for all children at age 6, these effects five and six years after training are impressive. The data files for the recently collected grade 8 data are not yet completely cleaned and organized. Still, the effects of the early phonologicl skills on reading in grade 8 were preliminary investigated, using SEM (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2012). The assumption in the present study is that Gf is mediated through phonological awareness to early reading. Thus, phonological awareness was regressed on Gf, and reading related skills in grade 8 were regressed on phonological awareness. A manifest variable representing group assignment was related to the reading measures. There was an effect of the early phonological training on a latent measure reflecting reading related tasks in grade 8 (es = .40). When scrutinizing the effects on the manifest reading related measures, there was an effect of training on word decoding (es =.25) and reading comprehension (es =.42), whereas there was no significant effect on spelling. For the current presentation the model will be extended. Reading related measures in grades 2 and 3 will be included, and thus, most of the training effects on grade 8 reading is expected to be indirect through grades 2 and 3 reading. Direct and indirect effects of Gf and phonological awareness will be investigated. Further, interaction effects of group assignment on the one hand, and Gf and phonological awareness on the other hand respectively will be estimated.

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