A Cross-Linguistic Perspective on the Relation Between Temporary Memory Skills and Early Reading Ability

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Abstract
This study of Japanese second graders reveals that, like successful readers of the alphabet, good beginning readers of Japanese excel in memory for linguistic material. It documents significant associations between children's reading ability, memory for Hiragana, Kanji, and spoken nonsense words, but not between these measures and memory for photographs of faces. However, unlike good readers of the alphabet, good readers of Japanese may further excel in one form of nonlinguistic memory. Japanese children's reading ability and their memory for Kanji both associate with their memory for visual nonsense designs. The implication is that linguistic memory skills may contribute to successful acquisition of all orthographies, whereas the importance of nonlinguistic memory skills can vary.

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