Do Executive Function Skills Moderate the Effect of Spanish Early Reading Skills on English Reading Trajectory

Spanish–English emergent bilingual children show substantial variability in English reading development, yet less is known about how early Spanish literacy and executive function jointly explain this variability. We first examined whether Spanish early reading skills and executive function skills (working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control) predicted children’s initial English reading levels and reading growth. We also investigated whether these executive function skills moderated the association between Spanish early reading skills and English reading. Latent growth curve analyses were conducted to examine these relations among 308 Spanish–English emergent bilingual children. Results showed that inhibitory control predicted bilingual children’s initial English reading levels, whereas Spanish early reading skills predicted English reading growth. Importantly, our moderation analyses showed that inhibitory control moderated the cross-language relation between Spanish early reading skills and English reading growth, with Spanish early reading skills more strongly related to reading growth among children with lower inhibitory control. Findings suggest that Spanish early reading skills and inhibitory control play distinct but interactive roles in bilingual children’s English reading development.