Early reading skill compounds, because children who read well read more and thereby widen the gap.
Stanovich's 1986 paper applied Merton's Matthew effect to literacy: the child who decodes fluently reads for pleasure, acquires vocabulary and background knowledge, and pulls away, while the struggling reader avoids the activity that would close the gap. The mechanism is plausible and widely accepted; the divergence it predicts is not consistently observed.
In practice
- A child who reads a million words a year and one who reads twenty thousand are not receiving the same curriculum.
- An intervention at seven costs a fraction of the same intervention at fourteen, and the difference is compounding.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is compounding through exposure: a child who decodes fluently reads more, which builds vocabulary and background knowledge, which makes the next text easier.
- In its favour
- The mechanism is well specified and the early gap in decoding is real and measurable, which is why early reading screening is now standard.
- Against it
- Evidence for widening gaps is mixed, since some studies find divergence and others stable or narrowing differences, and the result depends heavily on which test and which scale are used.
- Standing
- Evidence for widening gaps is mixed: some studies find divergence, others find stable or narrowing differences, and the result depends heavily on the measure and the period.
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- What works in learning, and what schools can and cannot change