Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Neurolinguistics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jneuroling Research paper Beyond the simple view of early first and second language reading: The impact of lexical quality Ludo Verhoeven a,* , Marinus Voeten a , Anne Vermeer b a Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands b Communication and Information Sciences, University of Tilburg, The Netherlands ABSTRACT According to the simple view of reading (SVR), reading comprehension is the product of word decoding and listening comprehension. Against this background, we examined the additional role of early lexical quality in the prediction of reading comprehension, either directly or indirectly via word decoding or listening comprehension. Following a longitudinal design, 566 children learning to read Dutch as L1 and 463 children learning to read Dutch as L2 in the Netherlands were tested on indicators lexical quality (LQ) in kindergarten (speech decoding, morphological knowledge and vocabulary); word decoding and listening comprehension in first grade; and then reading comprehension in second grade. The results showed L2 learners to consistently lag be- hind L1 readers on all measures except for word decoding. Both word decoding and listening comprehension predicted later reading comprehension for not only L1 but also L2 learners. However, later reading comprehension was also directly predicted by the children's early mor- phological and vocabulary knowledge, on the one hand, and indirectly by speech decoding and morphological knowledge via word decoding and indirectly by morphological and vocabulary knowledge via listening comprehension. These results show the beginning reading achievement of both L1 and L2 learners to be largely predicted by the quality of their early lexicons. Given the fact that second language (L2) learners are confronted with the task of learning to read in a language that they have yet to master, many of them experience serious reading difficulties. Beginning L2 readers generally show minor problems with word decoding but their reading comprehension often stays substantially behind their monolingual peers (see Verhoeven, 2017). In the Simple View of Reading (SVR) as originally put forth by Hoover and Gough (1990), reading comprehension is conceived as purely the product of word decoding and listening comprehension. Considerable empirical evidence has further shown the SVR to characterize both L1 reading development (Florit & Cain, 2011) and L2 reading development (Verhoeven and van Leeuwe, 2012). Learning to read in a second language (L2) is a particularly challenging task for children who have had only limited L2 exposure and therefore only limited listening comprehension to facilitate their starting reading. More recently, indicators of basic phonological, morphological, and semantic abilities (i.e., lexical quality) have also been shown to be predictive of both beginning L1 (Perfetti, 2007) and beginning L2 reading comprehension (Droop & Verhoeven, 2003). However, exactly how lexical quality relates to the other SVR predictors of reading comprehension is as yet unclear. In the present study, we therefore examined the impact of early phonological, morpho- logical, and semantic abilities in kindergarten on the prediction of beginning L1 and L2 reading comprehension both directly and indirectly via children's word decoding and/or listening comprehension in first and second grade. According to the Simple View of Reading (SVR) as proposed by Hoover and Gough (1990), reading comprehension can be https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2018.03.002 Received 19 June 2017; Received in revised form 16 February 2018; Accepted 6 March 2018 * Corresponding author. Radboud University Nijmegen, Behavioral Science Institute, P.O. Box 9044, 6500 KD, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail address: l.verhoeven@pwo.ru.nl (L. Verhoeven). Journal of Neurolinguistics xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0911-6044/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Please cite this article as: Verhoeven, L., Journal of Neurolinguistics (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2018.03.002