[How a Diversity of Preschool Literary Experiences Contribute to Emergent Literacy Skills]

Past studies show that language and cognitive factors among young children do not explain individual differences in written language skill acquisition (Sénéchal et LeFevre, 2002). Working from the principles of ethology and sociology, Pellegrini (2001) suggests that exposure to a larger variety of social contacts and contexts promotes the acquisition of literary language and reading/writing skills. The purpose of this study is to check the contribution of a variety of social writing-related opportunities to the acquisition of emerging literacy skills in 5 year-olds. This contribution is examined alongside family financial resources, parental education, frequency of mother-child reading/writing activities, and the child's verbal and mnemonic skills. The results partially confirm Pellegrini's hypothesis and support the relevance of considering several dimensions of preschool social experience. The unique contribution of diverse literary activities for 4 year-olds (48 months) seems to be as important as receptive vocabulary and short term memory, evaluated at 42 months. However, a larger variety of contacts was not added to the model.