Influencia de los factores demográficos, familiares y culturales en el desarrollo de las habilidades de inicio a la lectura en niños limeños de cinco años

Abstract

This research seeks to inquire if demographic, family and cultural variables have impact over prereading skills as phonological, alphabetical and metalinguistic knowledge as well as oral language skills (vocabulary, grammar, basic concepts and articulation) and cognitive processes (visual perception and auditory sequential memory) in five-year-old children who attend to preschool centers from Lima. In order to this purpose, it was applied the test Batería de Inicio a la Lectura (BIL) (Sellés, Martínez, Vidal-Abarca y Gilabert, 2008) to 208 students from this education level and it was designed a questionnaire, based on indicators from PISA (2012 Spanish report) specifically to collect data related to demographics (sex and age), family information (parent’s level education and job) and cultural factors (possessions of books). Findings show, on the side of demographic variables that girls have a better performance only on metalinguistic knowledge and cognitive processes. The superiority of older children in all skills assessed is also confirmed. A higher level of education has a positive effect on alphabetical knowledge. Similarly, coming from homes where their parents having a qualified occupation obtained higher scores on oral language skills and cognitive processes. Evidence about cultural factors show the accessibility of a number of books promotes the phonological and metalinguistic knowledge. As a conclusion, these factors do not affect in the same way all skills. This evidence suggests the necessity to specify the curriculum with an educational intervention to reduce the influence of family context.