This study analyses the longitudinal relationship between early inhibitory control skills and subsequent emergent literacy. At Time 1, a sample of 50 typically monolingual Italian toddlers aged 28 to 36 months in their last year of day-care was assessed on expressive vocabulary and two inhibitory control measures, tapping specifically response inhibition and interference suppression. At Time 2, during the preschool years, children aged 49 to 72 months were re-assessed on a battery of emergent literacy tasks including three phonological awareness tasks and an orthographic knowledge task. The results of the hierarchical linear regression analyses suggest that interference suppression evaluated at Time 1 is a key process in the acquisition and construction of both phonological awareness and early orthographic knowledge, even when children’s early expressive vocabulary was included in the analyses. Unlike previous studies, the present study included very young children, thus allowing us to explore the developmental antecedents of two important precursors of reading and writing abilities.

这项研究分析了早期抑制控制技能和随后出现的扫盲之间的纵向关系。在时间1，对50名典型的单语意大利幼儿进行抽样，评估他们在最后一天的日托工作中年龄在28到36个月之间的年龄，年龄在28到36个月之间，并采用了两种抑制性控制措施，分别采用了反应抑制和干扰抑制。在学前班的时间2，对49至72个月大的儿童进行了一系列紧急扫盲任务的重新评估，包括三项语音意识任务和一项拼字知识任务。分层线性回归分析的结果表明，在时间1评估的干扰抑制是获取和构建语音意识和早期拼写知识的关键过程，即使在分析中包括了儿童早期的表达词汇时也是如此。与以前的研究不同，本研究包括很小的孩子，因此使我们能够探索阅读和写作能力的两个重要先兆的发展先例。