Monica Melby-Lervåg
Biographic Data
| ID | 1660606 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Monica Melby-Lervåg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Monica |
| FAMILY NAME | Melby-Lervåg |
| SIGNATURE | MELBY-LERVÅG M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oslo |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6461-1167 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 44 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Attitudes and Emotions in the Context of Mathematical Learning
The Effectiveness of a Language Comprehension Intervention on the Language, Reading, and Writing Skills of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students
This pre‐registered randomized controlled trial tests the impact of a language comprehension intervention on the language and literacy of 448 upper elementary Roma and non‐Roma students from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. The students from the intervention group participated in 132 language comprehension intervention sessions (designed by a research team) which focused on Tier 2 vocabulary instruction and development of expressive l…
Research Review
BACKGROUND: Language is an essential skill for learning and academic achievement; therefore, children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are at risk for learning difficulties. Previous research has indicated a higher prevalence of mathematical difficulties in children with DLD compared to control children without such difficulties. However, the extent to which DLD and mathematical difficulties co-occur, as well as the nature of the diffic…
Improving reading comprehension through language comprehension and early word reading
This randomized controlled trial examined the effectiveness of the UiT-ReadWell program, a reading and language intervention for children aged 7-9 (second and third grades) identified as at risk for reading disorders through national reading assessments.The intervention aimed to improve reading comprehension by targeting both language comprehension and decoding (word reading) skills.A total of 415 students were randomly assigned to either the exp…
The intergenerational impact of mothers and fathers on children's word reading development
BACKGROUND: Numerous studies have investigated the associations between the home literacy environment (HLE) and children's word reading skills. However, these associations may partly reflect shared genetic factors since parents provide both the reading environment and their child's genetic predisposition to reading. Hence, the relationship between the HLE and children's reading is genetically confounded. To address this, parents' reading abilitie…
Speech sound skills, language comprehension, and early reading development in poor readers
This retrospective study investigates two questions: (a) whether speech sound difficulties, reported by parents looking back on their children’s early speech sound skills and concurrently at ages 7–8, can predict language comprehension and early reading challenges in children identified as poor readers and (b) whether there is a relationship between the type of speech errors and language comprehension and early reading skills in these children. T…
Cognitive factors underlying mathematical skills
In understanding the nature of mathematical skills, the most influential theories suggest that mathematical cognition draws on different systems: numerical, linguistic, spatial, and general cognitive skills. Studies show that skills in these areas are highly predictive of outcomes in mathematics. Nonetheless, the strength of these relations with mathematical achievement varies, and little is known about the moderators or relative importance of ea…
How are Difficulty Types Related to the Allocation of Special Needs Assistance in Early Childhood Education and Care
Home learning environments and children’s language and literacy skills
06). Published studies showed significantly larger associations than unpublished studies, and countries with greater income inequality showed a larger association than relatively egalitarian societies. We conclude that the small overall association should not be taken as support for the absence of, or a vanishingly small relationship between the home learning environment and children's language and literacy skills in LMI countries. Rather, an imp…
Improving Numeracy Skills in First Graders with Low Performance in Early Numeracy
Children with low performance in early numeracy are at risk of facing learning difficulties in mathematics, but few trials have examined how this can be ameliorated. A total of 120 first-grade children ( M age = 6.4 years) were randomly assigned to an intervention or a control condition. The 14-week intervention targeted early numeracy skills and was delivered in small groups three times a week. Immediately after the initial 8-week intervention p…
Morphology—A Gateway to Advanced Language
Knowledge about the smallest meaningful units of language, morphemes, is crucial for vocabulary and reading comprehension. This meta-analysis of 43 studies examined differences in morphological knowledge in the societal language between language-minority and language-majority children. There was a moderate to large mean group difference in morphological knowledge in favor of the language-majority children. Studies that examined inflectional knowl…
Research Review
The impact of articulatory consciousness training on reading and spelling literacy in students with severe dyslexia
This study evaluates the effect of an intervention whose aim is to make articulatory consciousness a tool in decoding and spelling. The sample comprises 11 students with severe dyslexia (2 SD below the mean pseudoword scores), and the intervention programme consists of 32 individual sessions over 8 weeks. The study applies a multiple baseline/probe design with five baseline tests that correspond to a control condition, eight tests during the inte…
The concurrent and longitudinal relationship between narrative skills and other language skills in children
We examined the concurrent relationship between narrative skills (the Renfrew Bus Story Test) and core language measures (vocabulary, grammar and verbal memory) at age 4 and the longitudinal relationship between core language and listening comprehension skills at age 7 in a sample of 215 children using latent variables and structural equation modelling. Our main purpose was to investigate to what extent narrative retell constitutes a unique influ…
Is a procedural learning deficit a causal risk factor for developmental language disorder or dyslexia? A meta-analytic review
63). Possible reasons for the discrepancy in results from different tasks that all purportedly measure procedural learning are highlighted. We conclude that current data do not provide an adequate test of the theory that a generalized procedural learning deficit is a causal risk factor for developmental dyslexia or developmental language disorder. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
A Common Family Factor Underlying Language Difficulties and Internalizing Problems
Studies have identified concurrent, longitudinal, and bidirectional associations between language difficulties and internalizing problems. This is commonly explained by social exclusion or withdrawal from peers, but underlying mechanisms are not well understood. This study uses sibling data to investigate if the comorbidity between language difficulties and internalizing problems is best explained by familial factors shared by siblings, such as g…
Is bilingualism related to a cognitive advantage in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis
0.06), and there were indications of publication bias. A moderator analysis showed significant group differences on EF in favor of bilinguals for studies of children from middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds and studies from one specific lab. The EF components of cold inhibition, switching, and monitoring expressed significant bilingual advantages, but monitoring and cold inhibition were affected by publication bias. As for switching, this rema…
Unpicking the Developmental Relationship Between Oral Language Skills and Reading Comprehension
Listening comprehension and word decoding are the two major determinants of the development of reading comprehension. The relative importance of different language skills for the development of listening and reading comprehension remains unclear. In this 5-year longitudinal study, starting at age 7.5 years (n = 198), it was found that the shared variance between vocabulary, grammar, verbal working memory, and inference skills was a powerful longi…
Growth in Oral Reading Fluency in a Semitransparent Orthography
This study investigated an adaptation of the Oral Reading Fluency ( ORF ) measure of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills into a European context for the Norwegian language, which has a more transparent orthography than English. Second‐order latent growth curve modeling was used to examine the longitudinal measurement invariance of the ORF measure, the growth in oral reading fluency within and across grades 2–5, the relative stab…
Working Memory Training Does Not Improve Performance on Measures of Intelligence or Other Measures of “Far Transfer”
It has been claimed that working memory training programs produce diverse beneficial effects. This article presents a meta-analysis of working memory training studies (with a pretest-posttest design and a control group) that have examined transfer to other measures (nonverbal ability, verbal ability, word decoding, reading comprehension, or arithmetic; 87 publications with 145 experimental comparisons). Immediately following training there were r…
Oral language deficits in familial dyslexia
This article reviews 95 publications (based on 21 independent samples) that have examined children at family risk of reading disorders. We report that children at family risk of dyslexia experience delayed language development as infants and toddlers. In the preschool period, they have significant difficulties in phonological processes as well as with broader language skills and in acquiring the foundations of decoding skill (letter knowledge, ph…
Sentence repetition is a measure of children's language skills rather than working memory limitations
Sentence repetition tasks are widely used in the diagnosis and assessment of children with language difficulties. This paper seeks to clarify the nature of sentence repetition tasks and their relationship to other language skills. We present the results from a 2‐year longitudinal study of 216 children. Children were assessed on measures of sentence repetition, vocabulary knowledge and grammatical skills three times at approximately yearly interva…
Reading comprehension and its underlying components in second-language learners
We report a systematic meta-analytic review of studies comparing reading comprehension and its underlying components (language comprehension, decoding, and phonological awareness) in first- and second-language learners. The review included 82 studies, and 576 effect sizes were calculated for reading comprehension and underlying components. Key findings were that, compared to first-language learners, second-language learners display a medium-sized…
Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review
It has been suggested that working memory training programs are effective both as treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other cognitive disorders in children and as a tool to improve cognitive ability and scholastic attainment in typically developing children and adults. However, effects across studies appear to be variable, and a systematic meta-analytic review was undertaken. To be included in the review, studies ha…
Phonological skills and their role in learning to read
The authors report a systematic meta-analytic review of the relationships among 3 of the most widely studied measures of children's phonological skills (phonemic awareness, rime awareness, and verbal short-term memory) and children's word reading skills. The review included both extreme group studies and correlational studies with unselected samples (235 studies were included, and 995 effect sizes were calculated). Results from extreme group comp…
Reading comprehension and its underlying components in second-language learners
We report a systematic meta-analytic review of studies comparing reading comprehension and its underlying components (language comprehension, decoding, and phonological awareness) in first- and second-language learners. The review included 82 studies, and 576 effect sizes were calculated for reading comprehension and underlying components. Key findings were that, compared to first-language learners, second-language learners display a medium-sized…
Growth in Oral Reading Fluency in a Semitransparent Orthography
This study investigated an adaptation of the Oral Reading Fluency ( ORF ) measure of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills into a European context for the Norwegian language, which has a more transparent orthography than English. Second‐order latent growth curve modeling was used to examine the longitudinal measurement invariance of the ORF measure, the growth in oral reading fluency within and across grades 2–5, the relative stab…
Cross‐linguistic transfer of oral language, decoding, phonological awareness and reading comprehension
We present a meta‐analysis of cross‐linguistic transfer of oral language (vocabulary and listening comprehension), phonology (decoding and phonological awareness) and reading comprehension. Our findings show a small meta‐correlation between first (L1) and second (L2) oral language and a moderate to large correlation between L1 and L2 phonological awareness and decoding. This is interpreted in terms of the complexity of oral language compared with…
Phonological skills and their role in learning to read
The authors report a systematic meta-analytic review of the relationships among 3 of the most widely studied measures of children's phonological skills (phonemic awareness, rime awareness, and verbal short-term memory) and children's word reading skills. The review included both extreme group studies and correlational studies with unselected samples (235 studies were included, and 995 effect sizes were calculated). Results from extreme group comp…
Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review
It has been suggested that working memory training programs are effective both as treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other cognitive disorders in children and as a tool to improve cognitive ability and scholastic attainment in typically developing children and adults. However, effects across studies appear to be variable, and a systematic meta-analytic review was undertaken. To be included in the review, studies ha…
Reading comprehension and its underlying components in second-language learners
We report a systematic meta-analytic review of studies comparing reading comprehension and its underlying components (language comprehension, decoding, and phonological awareness) in first- and second-language learners. The review included 82 studies, and 576 effect sizes were calculated for reading comprehension and underlying components. Key findings were that, compared to first-language learners, second-language learners display a medium-sized…
Sentence repetition is a measure of children's language skills rather than working memory limitations
Sentence repetition tasks are widely used in the diagnosis and assessment of children with language difficulties. This paper seeks to clarify the nature of sentence repetition tasks and their relationship to other language skills. We present the results from a 2‐year longitudinal study of 216 children. Children were assessed on measures of sentence repetition, vocabulary knowledge and grammatical skills three times at approximately yearly interva…
Working Memory Training Does Not Improve Performance on Measures of Intelligence or Other Measures of “Far Transfer”
It has been claimed that working memory training programs produce diverse beneficial effects. This article presents a meta-analysis of working memory training studies (with a pretest-posttest design and a control group) that have examined transfer to other measures (nonverbal ability, verbal ability, word decoding, reading comprehension, or arithmetic; 87 publications with 145 experimental comparisons). Immediately following training there were r…
Oral language deficits in familial dyslexia
This article reviews 95 publications (based on 21 independent samples) that have examined children at family risk of reading disorders. We report that children at family risk of dyslexia experience delayed language development as infants and toddlers. In the preschool period, they have significant difficulties in phonological processes as well as with broader language skills and in acquiring the foundations of decoding skill (letter knowledge, ph…
Growth in Oral Reading Fluency in a Semitransparent Orthography
This study investigated an adaptation of the Oral Reading Fluency ( ORF ) measure of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills into a European context for the Norwegian language, which has a more transparent orthography than English. Second‐order latent growth curve modeling was used to examine the longitudinal measurement invariance of the ORF measure, the growth in oral reading fluency within and across grades 2–5, the relative stab…
Unpicking the Developmental Relationship Between Oral Language Skills and Reading Comprehension
Listening comprehension and word decoding are the two major determinants of the development of reading comprehension. The relative importance of different language skills for the development of listening and reading comprehension remains unclear. In this 5-year longitudinal study, starting at age 7.5 years (n = 198), it was found that the shared variance between vocabulary, grammar, verbal working memory, and inference skills was a powerful longi…
A Common Family Factor Underlying Language Difficulties and Internalizing Problems
Studies have identified concurrent, longitudinal, and bidirectional associations between language difficulties and internalizing problems. This is commonly explained by social exclusion or withdrawal from peers, but underlying mechanisms are not well understood. This study uses sibling data to investigate if the comorbidity between language difficulties and internalizing problems is best explained by familial factors shared by siblings, such as g…
Is bilingualism related to a cognitive advantage in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis
0.06), and there were indications of publication bias. A moderator analysis showed significant group differences on EF in favor of bilinguals for studies of children from middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds and studies from one specific lab. The EF components of cold inhibition, switching, and monitoring expressed significant bilingual advantages, but monitoring and cold inhibition were affected by publication bias. As for switching, this rema…
The impact of articulatory consciousness training on reading and spelling literacy in students with severe dyslexia
This study evaluates the effect of an intervention whose aim is to make articulatory consciousness a tool in decoding and spelling. The sample comprises 11 students with severe dyslexia (2 SD below the mean pseudoword scores), and the intervention programme consists of 32 individual sessions over 8 weeks. The study applies a multiple baseline/probe design with five baseline tests that correspond to a control condition, eight tests during the inte…
The concurrent and longitudinal relationship between narrative skills and other language skills in children
We examined the concurrent relationship between narrative skills (the Renfrew Bus Story Test) and core language measures (vocabulary, grammar and verbal memory) at age 4 and the longitudinal relationship between core language and listening comprehension skills at age 7 in a sample of 215 children using latent variables and structural equation modelling. Our main purpose was to investigate to what extent narrative retell constitutes a unique influ…
Is a procedural learning deficit a causal risk factor for developmental language disorder or dyslexia? A meta-analytic review
63). Possible reasons for the discrepancy in results from different tasks that all purportedly measure procedural learning are highlighted. We conclude that current data do not provide an adequate test of the theory that a generalized procedural learning deficit is a causal risk factor for developmental dyslexia or developmental language disorder. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
Morphology—A Gateway to Advanced Language
Knowledge about the smallest meaningful units of language, morphemes, is crucial for vocabulary and reading comprehension. This meta-analysis of 43 studies examined differences in morphological knowledge in the societal language between language-minority and language-majority children. There was a moderate to large mean group difference in morphological knowledge in favor of the language-majority children. Studies that examined inflectional knowl…
Research Review
Improving Numeracy Skills in First Graders with Low Performance in Early Numeracy
Children with low performance in early numeracy are at risk of facing learning difficulties in mathematics, but few trials have examined how this can be ameliorated. A total of 120 first-grade children ( M age = 6.4 years) were randomly assigned to an intervention or a control condition. The 14-week intervention targeted early numeracy skills and was delivered in small groups three times a week. Immediately after the initial 8-week intervention p…
Home learning environments and children’s language and literacy skills
06). Published studies showed significantly larger associations than unpublished studies, and countries with greater income inequality showed a larger association than relatively egalitarian societies. We conclude that the small overall association should not be taken as support for the absence of, or a vanishingly small relationship between the home learning environment and children's language and literacy skills in LMI countries. Rather, an imp…
The intergenerational impact of mothers and fathers on children's word reading development
BACKGROUND: Numerous studies have investigated the associations between the home literacy environment (HLE) and children's word reading skills. However, these associations may partly reflect shared genetic factors since parents provide both the reading environment and their child's genetic predisposition to reading. Hence, the relationship between the HLE and children's reading is genetically confounded. To address this, parents' reading abilitie…
Speech sound skills, language comprehension, and early reading development in poor readers
This retrospective study investigates two questions: (a) whether speech sound difficulties, reported by parents looking back on their children’s early speech sound skills and concurrently at ages 7–8, can predict language comprehension and early reading challenges in children identified as poor readers and (b) whether there is a relationship between the type of speech errors and language comprehension and early reading skills in these children. T…
Cognitive factors underlying mathematical skills
In understanding the nature of mathematical skills, the most influential theories suggest that mathematical cognition draws on different systems: numerical, linguistic, spatial, and general cognitive skills. Studies show that skills in these areas are highly predictive of outcomes in mathematics. Nonetheless, the strength of these relations with mathematical achievement varies, and little is known about the moderators or relative importance of ea…
How are Difficulty Types Related to the Allocation of Special Needs Assistance in Early Childhood Education and Care
Attitudes and Emotions in the Context of Mathematical Learning
The Effectiveness of a Language Comprehension Intervention on the Language, Reading, and Writing Skills of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students
This pre‐registered randomized controlled trial tests the impact of a language comprehension intervention on the language and literacy of 448 upper elementary Roma and non‐Roma students from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. The students from the intervention group participated in 132 language comprehension intervention sessions (designed by a research team) which focused on Tier 2 vocabulary instruction and development of expressive l…
Research Review
BACKGROUND: Language is an essential skill for learning and academic achievement; therefore, children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are at risk for learning difficulties. Previous research has indicated a higher prevalence of mathematical difficulties in children with DLD compared to control children without such difficulties. However, the extent to which DLD and mathematical difficulties co-occur, as well as the nature of the diffic…
Psychology (19 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (17 works) · Language Development and Disorders (15 works) · Developmental psychology (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (13 works) · Linguistics (12 works) · Reading (process) (11 works) · Cognition (10 works) · Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills (9 works) · Literacy (8 works)