To identify cognitive skills that may be diminished in reading difficulties, 90 preschoolers and first graders were tested in reading, spelling, phonological awareness, phonological memory, vocabulary, arithmetic, visual processing, and sequential processing. Comparison between good readers and poor readers (above and below one standard deviation, respectively), revealed that good readers were significantly superior to poor readers in spelling, phonological awareness, vocabulary, phonological memory and visual memory. Results suggest strong functional relationship between phonological processing and reading, moderate functional relationships between sequential processing and arithmetic on one hand and reading on the other, and weak correlation between visual processing and reading.
reading; spelling; cognition
