The Co-development of Reading and Attention from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence: A Multivariate Latent Growth Curve Study

Attention skills are strong cross-sectional predictors of reading comprehension from childhood through to adolescence. However, less is known about the developmental relations between these two domains across this period. This study examined the co-development of reading and attention in a community sample of 614 Australian school students (50% female). Reading and attention were assessed at ages 8, 10, 12 and 14. Results of univariate latent growth models demonstrated, on average, curvilinear trajectories for reading in which rapid growth across younger age spans decelerates as children reach adolescence. By contrast, attention skills remained relatively stable on average. Significant negative correlations were observed between the intercept and slope factors in separate reading (r=-.62) and attention models (r=-.39) suggesting compensatory growth patterns in which poorer performing students in both domains at age 8 have steeper trajectories than their higher performing peers. A comparison of a multivariate latent growth model and an autoregressive latent trajectory model with structured residuals (ALT-SR) examined the interrelatedness of development in reading and attention. Both between-individual and within-individual cross-domain parameters showed reading and attention to be positively related at grade 3, indicating an association between better attention and higher reading achievement at age 8. However, there was little evidence for interrelated growth across domains in this sample. The results contribute to theories which explain whether and how multiple cognitive domains co-develop over a substantial period of childhood and early adolescence.