Cognitive Skills and Reading Speed

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between cognitive skills, reading speed and reading comprehension skills in children who will learn to read and who do not have any diagnosis.

Learning to read is a very difficult process for both parents and children. Some children overcome this process more easily, while others have more difficulty. Understanding this process and the factors that affect it is important for developing academic skills. Reading is a complex, multifactorial, and dynamic process. When reading begins, parallel activation of limbic, motor, and cognitive processes occurs in different brain regions, including the cortex, thalamus, and basal ganglia. Orthographic word processes, phonological analysis, mapping between print, sound, and meaning, articulatory registration, and semantic/syntactic processing of written words occur through activation of left ventral occipitotemporal, dorsal temporoparietal, and left inferior frontal brain networks. During this process, the brain mentioned above networks establish connections with many areas of both hemispheres to enable comprehension. Reading skills involve the activation and interaction of cognitive processes such as attention, working memory, and executive control. Their study with 9-year-old children stated that planning skills are important for reading and that good inhibitory control increases phonotic coding skills. Miller and colleagues noted that the executive function subcomponents of working memory, but not inhibition, explained 52% of the variance in literacy and 81% of the variance in mathematics. Gallen and colleagues found that the ability to sustain attention was associated with reading and mathematics skills. McClelland and colleagues suggested that children with a higher standard deviation score in attention span at age 4 were 48.7% more likely to graduate from college by age 25. As can be seen, although reading skills have been linked to cognitive abilities in the literature, complete clarity has not been achieved. It would be appropriate to evaluate reading in general as word recognition/identification and reading comprehension skills. While word recognition involves lower-level cognitive processes, comprehension requires the automatization of lower-level cognitive skills coordinated with the effect of higher-level cognitive skills. In this context, it may be necessary to examine which cognitive skill can predict reading according to subheadings of reading such as reading speed and reading comprehension. If the relationship between cognitive skills and the speed of learning to read and reading comprehension is revealed, the performance of children at risk of falling behind in reading can be increased with additional measures. Since it will be predicted which of the children who have just started school will fall behind in learning to read by using the tests with high prediction coefficients to be determined at the end of the study, developmental measures can be taken for these children. In addition, it will be possible to focus on cognitive exercises to increase the success of these children in their educational lives.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between cognitive skills in children who will learn to read and who do not have any diagnosis and reading speed and reading comprehension skills.

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* Being 6 years old and above and starting primary school
* Not knowing how to read and write
* Not having received any previous literacy training
* Knowing Turkish

Exclusion criteria:

* Having dyslexia
* Being diagnosed with a neurological or psychiatric disease
* Having an organic disorder such as hearing and vision