THE RELATION BETWEEN METALINGUISTIC ABILITY, SOCIAL METACOGNITION ANDREADING - A DEVELOPMENTAL-STUDY

This study examined the relation between metalinguistic ability, socia l metacognition, linguistic and general ability prior to the commencem ent of reading and 6 months after school entry. Forty-eight children b etween the ages of 4.3 and 4.9 years from several preschools in Wellin gton, New Zealand participated in the first part of this study and 42 were subsequently retested one year later. Children were administered the block design and vocabulary subtests from the WIPPSI, a test of pr int awareness, a rhyme task, a syllable segmentation task, and a false -belief task in two separate 20-minute sessions at the preschool. The Burt Word Reading Test, and a phonemic segmentation task were also inc luded at retesting. Results showed, on the whole, a pattern of signifi cant relationships among various meta-abilities at preschool and that most were correlated with general ability. One year later, with the ad vent of reading instruction, only phonemic segmentation and print awar eness were significantly related. The best predictor of later reading; achievement was syllable segmentation taken at preschool, while contem poraneous correlates were measures of phonemic segmentation and print awareness. These results support a view of the development of metacogn ition that is domain-general and based on an underlying cognitive capa city. Particular rather than general metalinguistic abilities are rela ted to reading ability, and these change over time.