The relation between metalinguistic abilities, social metacognition, cognition and reading: a developmental study

Abstract

Considerable debate exists concerning the existence and nature of the relationship between metalinguistic abilities and metacognitive abilities. Some investigators have suggested that metalinguistic and metacognitive abilities are interrelated and dependent on more general cognitive development. Others believe that the two forms of abilities are entirely independent. Views of the development of metalinguistic abilities and the relation to both language and reading acquisition reflect this prior debate. This study examined the relation between language, metalinguistic ability, print awareness, general cognition and social metacognition prior to the commencement of reading and six months after school entry. Forty-eight children from five preschools in the Wellington area participated in the first part of this study and 40 were subsequently retested approximately one year later in primary school. All children were individually administered the Block Design subtest of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary School Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI), British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS), a syllable awareness test, print awareness test, and a false belief task over two separate 20 minute sessions at the preschool. The same tests were re-administered at the primary school with the exception of the BPVS and Block design test. Further, a test of phonemic awareness and the Burt Word Reading test were administered at this later time. Results of the study showed a trend of significant correlations between the various meta-abilities at preschool. Most of the variables were also correlated with general intelligence, while the best predictor of later reading achievement was found to be syllable segmentation ability. At primary school one year later with the advent of formal reading instruction, only the measures of print awareness and phonemic segmentation were significantly correlated, with a lower nonsignificant pattern of correlation for the other meta-ability measures. The results were found to provide support for a view of numerous varied metacognitive abilities which overlap and depend upon the ability to represent which emerges during development. These abilities also appeared to be related to general nonverbal intelligence. In particular, syllable segmentation ability measured at 4 1/2 years of age were found to be related to reading ability at 5 1/2 years of age, with relations differing with the onset of reading instruction.