Some Common Causes of Literacy and Numeracy
Keywords:
literacy, numeracy, reading comprehension, speech perception, language skillsAbstract
The "primacy of reading" hypothesis as the explanation of the high correlation between children's competencies in literacy and numeracy is rejected. Instead a "primacy of speech perception" hypothesis is examined. Analysis-by-synthesis speech recognition procedures are acquired in early childhood prior to the development of basic literacy and numeracy. Yet, the logic of the analysis-by-synthesis procedure is common to both arithmetic problem solving and reading comprehension. In structural terms, competencies in all three decoding strategies are dependent on the child's ability to intuitively use phonetic, syntactic, and semantic rule-following or cueing strategies. Thus, it was found that all the covariation between reading and numeration for a sample of grade four children was accounted for by these strategies as mediated by the school dependent basic language skills. Similarly, the research confirmed the reciprocal interrelationship between literacy and numeracy. An elasticities analysis demonstrated, however, that reading and numeration, though highly responsive to one another, were not particularly responsive to changes in children's cueing strategies or basic skills performances. Some suggestions for further research were made in the light of this unanticipated finding.
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