Precocious Readers: Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

Precocious readers represent a small portion of children who enter school each year. Researchers have investigated the environmental characteristics, acquisition process, psycholinguistic and neuropsychological characteristics, and academic skills of these children. Despite the research findings in the area, researchers and clinicians are still unable to predict who these children will be, describe how precocious readers fit into our current theories of emergent literacy and reading development, and confidently state whether this knowledge could be generalized beyond the precocious reader to the typically reading child. Forty years of research in this area is reviewed. Suggestions for improving the accessibility and generalizability of knowledge about precocious readers are provided.