Developmental relationship between home literacy environment and emergent literacy in a transparent orthography: a two-year longitudinal study in Japanese preschoolers

We examined the relationship between home literacy environment (HLE) and early literacy acquisition in Japanese syllabic Hiragana and whether this relationship changes during the preschool years. One hundred five Japanese-speaking young children (62.9% male, Mage = 4;11) were followed from the second year to the third year of preschool. The children were assessed on phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), vocabulary, and Hiragana letter knowledge at the end of the second year of preschool and at the middle and the end of the third year. Their parents completed a questionnaire regarding the frequency of parent teaching (PT) and shared book reading (SBR) at home, as well as access to literacy resources (ALR). Path analysis showed that PT and ALR, but not SBR, in the second year of preschool predicted Hiragana letter knowledge at the middle of the third year, after controlling for phonological awareness, RAN, and vocabulary. In contrast, PT and ALR at the middle of the third year did not predict Hiragana letter knowledge at the end of the year. These findings suggest that the effects of HLE on children’s early literacy acquisition in transparent orthographies like Japanese Hiragana may be transient and diminish even before formal literacy instruction begins at school.