Acquiring mastery in reading is considered one of the primary academic skills during the early years of elementary school. Additionally, attaining proficiency in reading during the early grades of elementary school serves as a strong predictor for future academic achievements and overall success in life. This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the effect of several linguistic and cognitive variables on decoding abilities in the Bosnian language. The sample consisted of 153 children in the 2nd to 5th grades of elementary school. To assess decoding abilities, we employed tasks involving reading real words and non-words (pseudowords). The key predictors for both tasks included phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming of letters, working memory, and processing speed. Both models accounted for approximately 64% of the variance in the scores, signifying a substantial advancement compared to existing models of reading in the Bosnian language. The results of this study may contribute to the development of targeted and effective reading interventions in early elementary education.

The aim of the research is to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the occurrence and magnitude of mental health consequences among students at the University of Sarajevo, which manifest themselves in certain types and levels of psychological distress, as well as to examine various aspects of general mental functioning that are particularly important in an online learning and teaching environment. The research was conducted in July 2021 on a sample of 3439 students at the University of Sarajevo. The following measurement instruments were used: The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21), a Stress Coping Strategies Inventory and a Sociodemographic Variables Questionnaire. The results have shown that depression, anxiety and stress were present among students at levels which require additional interventions. Symptoms are significantly more present among female students than among male students. The differences tested between students of distinct faculties indicate that arts students have the highest values of depression, followed by students studying humanities, while social sciences students show the lowest values. The results showed that positive coping with stress is a protective factor for the symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress, while negative coping style is a risk factor for students' mental health. The obtained results suggest that the pandemic has a significant psychological impact on students that require interventions in improving their mental health.

Attainment of reading ability is one of the most important goals of early elementary education. The goal of the present study was to compare groups of good readers and poor readers on several cognitive and linguistic skills and to determine the influence of these variables in differentiating these two groups of readers. An additional goal was to determine whether there are differences in proportion of boys and girls in groups of good and poor readers. The sample for this study comprised 60 third-grade children divided in two categories, 30 children in the category of good readers and 30 children in the category of poor readers. The results of this study revealed the largest differences between good readers and poor readers were on the phoneme deletion task and processing speed task. Another finding is that more boys than girls were in the group of good readers and more girls than boys in the group of poor readers. It is very important to know which underlying skills best differentiate good and poor readers at certain age. This in turn will lead to creating more effective reading interventions.  

Reading is one of the most important academic skills that children master in the early grades of elementary school. The simple view of reading postulates that it consists of decoding abilities and linguistic understanding. The present study aims to explore the development of decoding abilities in the Bosnian language in children from Grade 3 to Grade 5. We assessed the relationships between word reading and pseudoword reading as measures of decoding skills, and phonemic deletion task, rapid automatized naming (RAN) of letters, and RAN of objects as the predictors of decoding skills. The sample for this study comprised 36 children (16 girls, 20 boys). This study’s results showed a significant improvement in decoding skills from Grade 3 to Grade 5. The best predictor of word reading in Grade 5 was RAN of objects in Grade 3, followed by RAN of letters in Grade 3. On the other hand, the significant predictors of pseudoword reading in Grade 5 were RAN of objects and the phoneme deletion task in Grade 3. Understanding reading development from Grade 3 to Grade 5 is informative and can help create better reading instruction for all readers.

Since the development of the original Support Intensity Scale—Adult Version (SIS-A) and the Support Intensity Scale—Child Version (SIS-C), the interest in supporting people with intellectual disabilities (ID) has changed. Resource allocation, better quality of resource utilization in the rehabilitation process, the development of support systems, and redefining the roles of organizations that support people with ID are just some of the changes. The aim of this study was to determine the factor structure of the SIS-C conducted on a sample of Bosnian–Herzegovinian (B&H) children (SISC B&H). The study included 377 children ID in B&H, aged 5-16. The data was analyzed with the SPSS 21 software (with the AMOS package). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to examine the factor structure of the SIS-C. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was applied to determine the factor and constructive validity of SIS-C B&H. The CFA results indicated a poor fit of both the theoretical and empirical models even after modifications were made. The EFA showed the opposite results. This could be explained by the fact that within the factor solutions obtained from the EFA, various aslope or orthogonal models, linear or hierarchical, can be constructed. Among these models, some exhibited good fit to the data. Thus, data from the current study could be used to generate new hypotheses and deliver more conclusive answers.

Learning to read is one of the most important academic accomplishments in the early grades of elementary school. Knowing what factors contribute to reading ability would improve instructional practices. The goal of the present study was to examine the effects of semantic fluency, phonological fluency, rapid naming, inhibitory control, selective attention, and visual motor integration on reading fluency in 140 second and third grade students. The results of this study indicated that significant predictors of reading fluency were: selective attention, semantic fluency, inhibitory control, and rapid naming. However, the association between predictor variables and reading fluency was moderated by the students’ grade. The article concludes with some suggestions on how to improve reading fluency in elementary school children, given that all predictors are susceptible to instruction.