The Correlation Between Cognitive Mechanisms and Reading in Elementary School Children With Respect to Persian Orthography

Since, based on previous findings, orthographic depth affects the nature of cognitive mechanisms, different patterns can be expected depending on the degrees of transparency or opacity of the orthographic systems of languages. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between rapid automatized naming, phonological awareness, and phonological working memory with reading speed and reading accuracy in Persian. The participants included 75 healthy and normal monolingual Persian-speaking children (mean age 121.6 months) studying in Grades 3-5 in Zahedan elementary schools. From each grade, 25 children were selected by purposive sampling. All children belonged to the middle and upper social classes. 9 subtests were administered to the children to measure the variables of IQ, reading speed, reading accuracy, phonological working memory, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming. The results indicated that there is a strong and significant relationship between rapid automatized naming and reading speed. The relationship between this variable and reading accuracy was moderate and significant. Phonological awareness had a relatively strong and significant relationship with reading speed and reading accuracy. Phonological working memory had a significant and moderate relationship with reading speed. It did not have a significant relationship with the reading accuracy. Regarding the relationship between these cognitive predictors and reading in Persian, it can be inferred that it is very similar to the relationship between these variables and reading, which has been reported in inconsistent orthographies like English and Hebrew. The results indicate that the cognitive predictors are significantly affected by the orthographic transparency.