確認影響閱讀發展的認知因素，並釐清這些認知變項對於區辨閱讀能力的效能，無疑地對早期篩選閱讀低成就危險群有重大幫助。而為了達成此一目的，先釐清相關認知變項是否對閱讀發展具有影響力以及驗證認知變項對閱讀能力的區辨效能為基本的工作。本研究以學校的國語成績將學童區分為低成就組以及一般控制組，發現工作記憶、拼注音、形音連結等認知成分能有效地區辨國小三年級受試者的閱讀成就組別。這樣的結果可供將來進行發展性閱讀能力區辨研究提供基礎。

Early diagnosis of at–risk dyslexic children has been a major issue in dyslexic research. In addition to being useful variables in the prediction of children's reading achievement, cognitive components that are clearly related to reading acquisition may also be employed to distinguish poor readers from normal ones even before children enter kindergarten. In this study, then, we evaluated students' level of reading achievement by looking at their working memory, phoneme blending, and visual-verbal pair association tasks. We found that these three tasks are very useful in determining each child's reading level (or group), and more importantly (for our purposes) that these tasks are especially useful for the identifying of poor readers.