Keith Stanovich’s 1986 article introduces the concept of the Matthew Effect in reading, a term drawn from the biblical Gospel of Matthew—“the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” In literacy, this concept explains how small early advantages in reading ability can snowball into significant disparities over time.
A bidirectional relationship
At the heart of Stanovich’s framework is the idea of reciprocal causation between cognitive processes and reading ability. Unlike older models that assumed one-way causation (e.g., poor phonological skills lead to poor reading), Stanovich emphasizes that reading itself influences cognitive development. For example, while phonological awareness is a key predictor of early reading success, learning to read also improves phonological skills—a bootstrapping cycle that amplifies differences over time.
Phonological awareness: The key to unlocking reading
Phonological awareness—the ability to manipulate speech sounds—is singled out as the most potent predictor of reading acquisition. Numerous studies show that children with strong phonological skills learn to read more quickly and independently. This leads to more reading practice, which in turn accelerates vocabulary growth, comprehension, and general knowledge.
The downward spiral for struggling readers
Children who struggle to decode words early on read less. This reduced exposure leads to slower vocabulary growth, weaker syntactic knowledge, and less practice—all of which reinforce poor reading outcomes. Over time, struggling readers may fall further behind not just in reading, but across the curriculum.
Stanovich details how this cycle starts shockingly early—by the middle of first grade, reading experience already varies greatly among ability groups. These disparities only increase as time goes on, creating a widening gap that’s difficult to reverse without targeted intervention.
Context and word recognition: Myths and clarifications
The article challenges a popular belief from top-down reading theories: that skilled readers rely more on contextual guessing and less on decoding. Stanovich shows that while context does aid comprehension, it’s efficient decoding—not reliance on context—that distinguishes good readers. Poor readers, in fact, rely more on context as a compensatory strategy because their decoding skills are weak.
Moreover, eye movement studies show that better readers do not skip or skim words more—they process words more efficiently. Thus, the root problem for struggling readers isn’t that they decode too much and comprehend too little (“word calling”), but that their decoding is too slow and effortful to allow for comprehension.
Consequences beyond reading
Stanovich highlights how differences in reading ability ripple into other areas: motivation, vocabulary, syntax, knowledge acquisition, and even cognitive development. Good readers acquire more knowledge and demonstrate stronger memory and metalinguistic awareness—not necessarily because they’re more intelligent, but because they read more. This explains why reading has such profound long-term effects on academic and intellectual growth.
Developmentally limited effects
The article also addresses how certain factors (like phonological awareness) are most predictive early on but less so later in development. Fluent adult readers use direct visual recognition rather than sounding out words. Thus, while phonological skills are crucial for starting the reading journey, other processes (like visual word recognition) take over as reading becomes automatic.
The reading-level match design
To untangle causes from consequences, Stanovich advocates for the reading-level match design, comparing older struggling readers with younger readers who are reading at the same level. This method helps clarify whether differences in cognitive tasks stem from reading experience or developmental delays.
