5.2.1 Synchronous correlations between cognitive and reading ability in time 1 and time 2 (hypotheses 1 and 2). As expected, hypotheses 1 and 2 are supported by the results;
cognitive component and reading ability were correlated at time 1 as well as at time 2, as indicated by the cross-lagged SEM analysis. These results are expected given previous studies undertaken in other languages (e.g. research in the Greek language by Kendeou, Papadopoulos and Kotzapoulou (2012). The findings on the bivariate correlations amongst the cognitive and reading ability tests show that all the cognitive tests (i.e. rapid colour naming, rapid number naming, rapid word segmentation, morphological production and morphological structure) were significantly correlated with the reading ability tests (i.e.
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reading comprehension and word recognition). This relationship suggests that children with high cognitive ability tend to have higher reading skills than children with low cognitive ability. As noted earlier, the relationship between cognitive component and reading ability is a well-established psychological principle. Hypotheses 1 and 2 in this study align with the Simple View of Reading (SVR), which illustrates the relationship between language comprehension and decoding skills (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Gough and Tunmer (1986) explained the SVR model as follows: reading comprehension (R) is the product of the relationship between language comprehension (C) and decoding skills (D) (R = C × D). The SVR equation illustrates that with insufficient decoding skills or language comprehension (or both), reading comprehension produces a value of zero if some other skill in the equation also registers a value of zero. Kendeou, Papadopoulos and Kotzapoulou (2013) empirically tested the emergence of SVR in the transparent orthography of the Greek language and found correlations between decoding skills (such as phonological awareness, letter identification, and vocabulary knowledge), and language comprehension skills (such as listening
comprehension). These patterns are broadly consistent with the SVR perspective that
decoding-related and listening comprehension skills in Greek are, at least to a certain extent, separable in young children. The relationship between cognitive component and reading ability is found not only in languages characterised by transparent orthographies but also in languages with opaque orthographies. Georgiou, Torppa, Manolitsis, Lyytinen and Parrila (2012) examined the longitudinal predictors of non-word decoding, reading fluency and spelling in three languages that vary in orthographic depth: Finnish, Greek and English. The authors found a significant correlation amongst phonological awareness, letter knowledge and rapid automatized naming speed in the three languages. The results of the
aforementioned studies and those of the current research both indicate that the relationship
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between cognitive component and reading ability is important to reading development in all languages.
5.2.2 Auto-regressive effects between cognitive component and reading ability in times 1 and 2 (hypotheses 3 and 4). A notable stability in cognitive component and reading ability over time was found in this study. The cognitive component at time 1 was positively related to that at time 2 (hypothesis 3), and the reading ability at times 1 was positively related to the reading ability at time 2 (hypothesis 4). These results suggest that both
cognitive ability and reading development remained largely stable over the interval spent by students in acquiring reading eligibility for time 2. This finding is consistent with that of Winskel and Iemwanthong (2010), who investigated reading and spelling development in Thai children. The authors found that the children performed substantially better on word reading and spelling tests than on the corresponding non-word reading and spelling activities.
After 4 months of schooling, the grade 1, 2 and 3 children achieved 42% accuracy in word reading, 24% accuracy in reading the corresponding non-words, 32% accuracy in word spelling and 17% accuracy in non-word spelling. A noticeable result is that reading and spelling performance rapidly increased between the youngest grade 1 children and the grades 2 and 3 children. Nevertheless, these results are more comparable with those on children learning to read languages with relatively opaque orthographies, such as English (Stuart &
Coltheart, 1988; Wimmer & Goswami, 1994), rather than languages with more transparent orthographies, such as German (Goswami, Ziegler, Dalton & Schneider, 2003; Landerl, Wimmer, & Frith, 1997). Children learning to read German rapidly develop the ability to read non-words because they have ready access to grapheme–phoneme conversion rules, which are compatible with the requirements of non-word reading tests in German (Landerl et al., 1997). By contrast, English children slowly develop such ability in early age because of the inconsistency of English orthography and the over-reliance on the use of large grain sizes,
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the adoption of whole-word or lexical strategy and the presence of ‘a rather underdeveloped alphabetic strategy’ for reading non-words (Wimmer & Goswami, 1994). The results of the current study reflect that previous cognitive component/reading abilities may predict such abilities over time.
5.2.3 Cross-lagged relationships between cognitive component and reading ability over the time (hypotheses 5 and 6). The findings of this work support the hypotheses;
significant relationships between cognitive and reading ability were found by the SEM cross-lagged analysis. The reading ability at time 1 was significantly associated with the cognitive component in time 2 (hypothesis 5), and the cognitive component in time 1 predicted the reading ability at time 2 (hypothesis 6). These results are aligning with the theories on the top–down processing and traditional bottom–up approach to reading. Moreover, the direction of relationship between cognitive component and reading was significantly and reciprocal in nature; that is, cognitive component could predict reading ability and vice versa over time.
This suggests that reading development in the Thai language benefits not only from
traditional bottom–up and top–down processing but also from an interactive view of reading.
Thai is a complex language. For example, its writing structure differs from its spelling structure, and a complex vowel can be placed above, below or on either side of a consonant.
Sounds can also be combined to produce a large additional number of vowels. The traditional bottom–up approach to reading can explain how Thai children learn to read. Thai children have to learn the phonemes of Thai consonants, vowels and tone, after which they are required to learn how to combine consonants and vowels to pronounce a word. This process indicates that Thai children develop cognitive component beginning from small units and then apply this skill to reading and comprehension. Figure 8 illustrates the process by which consonants, vowels and tone markers are combined to enable reading of a Thai word.
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เรื่อง
(Raung) /Story
ร เ-ื อ ง ื
Initial
consonant Vowel Final
consonant Tone marker
เรื่อง (Raung) /Story
Figure 8. Process for reading a Thai word.
Another peculiarity of Thai is that spaces are not used to segment syntactic units but only to delimit sentences; the language also rarely uses punctuation. When reading Thai, therefore, learners are required to segment using cues other than spaces. The lack of word boundaries makes word segmentation skills essential for Thai readers to achieve reading comprehension (Winskel, Perea, & Ratitamkul, 2012).
These findings are consistent with those of Chapman and Tunmer (2003), who support the traditional bottom–up approach to reading. The authors indicated that the development of successful reading skills necessitates that children employ efficient word recognition
strategies, which are necessary for the development of rapid word decoding skills. High levels of automaticity in word recognition, in turn, make available greater cognitive resources for allocation to comprehension and text integration processes (Adams, 1990; Tunmer &
Chapman, 1998). Moreover, finding of current study is consistent with the previous study of reading model in Chinese language (Yeung, Ho, Chan, Chung, & Wong, 2013). Yeung et al.
(2013)indicated that rapid automatized naming and morphological awareness predicted reading comprehension significantly by using word reading as a mediator factor among Chinese grade 4 students in Hong Kong. Yeung et al. (2013) suggested that morphological awareness, decoding-related skills and RAN were important cognitive factors in the reading
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model of non-alphabetic languages. The same was also found in the present study with a transparent orthography, Thai.
Both traditional bottom–up and top–down processing can be applied in examining Thai reading. In this work, reading ability was significantly associated with cognitive component over time, indicating that top–down processing theory can explain reading development in the context of the Thai language. This type of processing is principally based on the prior knowledge of children and in the communicative tasks that they accomplish in everyday life.
To comprehend a message, children begin with meaning at the paragraph level, after which they proceed to understanding the sentences and words that constitute the paragraph. Top–
down processing therefore enables the understanding of an ambiguous text because it activates high-level schemas that guide the reading process. Under this backdrop, prior knowledge and reader expectations become essential elements in the comprehension process.
Thus, when children confront a text, their previous experience guides their comprehension process. Children can also use context clues to determine the meaning of words that function in more than one way. For instance, the word ดวง (‘duong’/‘horoscope’) denotes different meanings, depending on the context in which it is used. It can denote ดวงอาทิตย์ (‘duong-ar-tid’/‘sun’) or ดวงเนตร (‘duong-nat’/‘eye’). Children using top–down reading theory can rely on context clues in determining what pronunciation is correct in a particular text. As Kendeou, van den Broek, White and Lynch (2007) pointed out, comprehension in itself is developed at an early age. That is, children can already understand causal relationships and events that happen around them before they confront texts. Both this ability and their growing knowledge of the world are precisely what enable them to understand what they read.
In the present research, the direction of the relationship between cognitive component and reading was significantly predicted in two ways. Although the path coefficients of cognitive component in predicting reading ability (bottom–up processing) are greater than
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those of reading ability in predicting cognitive component (top–down processing), we can assume that an interactive view processing can be used to examine reading development in Thai. To use the interactive view, children combine top–down and bottom–up strategies in comprehending a texts. Children who encounter an unknown word may use surface structure systems, such as graphophonic or letter-sound knowledge, to decode the word (bottom–up processing). Children may find it easier to use of deep structure systems, such as semantic knowledge (e.g. meaning and vocabulary), in decoding the same unknown word (top–down processing). Each process creates connections in different ways. The interactive view process validates and supports both methods of understanding and is underlain by the realization that individuals process information in interactive ways. These considerations are consistent with the perspectives of Angosto, Sanchez, Alvarez, Cuevas and Leon (2013), who investigated the relationship between the bottom–up and top–down approaches to reading comprehension for transparent-orthography languages, such as Spanish. The participants were students in grades 2, 4 and 6. The authors discussed the effects of bottom–up and top–down approaches and the occurrence of top–down processing in children who are learning to read. The results also suggest that top–down processing occurs at a very early age, that it starts to develop around the second year of primary school and that its effectiveness is comparable to that of bottom–up processing in later school years. The evident benefit of this model is the
opportunity for differentiation that it provides children. Children are not required to fit into a set mold or possess identical skill sets to decode and interpret a text. Nevertheless, they are encouraged to use a combination of strengths to gain understanding and new information.
When used in a classroom setting, the model should be employed to encourage children to share their knowledge with classmates or peers. This model enables a reader to bring his/her own background knowledge to reading and to interact with others in building meaning and cognitive component from a text.
74 5.3 Conclusion
This study investigated the relationship between cognitive component and reading ability in the context of the Thai language. The results of the cross-lagged SEM analysis confirm that cognitive component and reading ability exhibit a relationship over time.
Moreover, reading ability was associated with cognitive component and cognitive component could predict reading ability over time. The direction of the relationship between cognitive component and reading ability was significantly predicted in two ways: the path coefficients of cognitive component in predicting reading ability are greater than those of reading ability in predicting cognitive component. These results may reflect that the mechanisms responsible for the collaboration between cognitive component and reading ability (i.e. the interactive view of reading) represent the reading process in the context of the Thai language.
5.4 Limitations and future research
Although this study provides an important contribution to the existing literature on reading models through its examination of the patterns of directionality during the stages of cognitive component and reading ability development, several limitations are worth noting.
First, the EAP/PV of the morphological structure, morphological production and phoneme isolation tests were lower than 0.7, indicating that this measurement is less-reliable.
This result may be attributed to the limitations in the number of items in each test (15 items in the morphological structure and phoneme isolation tests; 10 items in the morphological production test). Researchers who intend to use morphological structure, morphological production and phoneme isolation tests should add more items to the tests (more than 30 items for each test).
Second, although the students were sampled from nine schools, all the data were collected in Loei province, which is characterised by socio-economically, linguistically and
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culturally diverse populations. The results may therefore be non-generalizable to other regions of Thailand. The present study only examined the related skills among fourth graders in the northeastern part of Thailand; therefore, it should be cautious about generalizing the findings among different age groups or regions without further investigation.
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