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Multilevel Predictors of Reading and Mathematics Achievement: A Systematic Review with a Multimodal Neuroimaging Illustration.

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Title: Multilevel Predictors of Reading and Mathematics Achievement: A Systematic Review with a Multimodal Neuroimaging Illustration.
Authors: He, Yuheng (AUTHOR), Long, Ping (AUTHOR), Chen, Rui (AUTHOR), Zhi, Dongmei (AUTHOR), Chen, Yitong (AUTHOR), Ma, Leilei (AUTHOR), Calhoun, Vince (AUTHOR), Qin, Shaozheng (AUTHOR), He, Yong (AUTHOR), Dong, Qi (AUTHOR), Tao, Sha (AUTHOR), Sui, Jing (AUTHOR)
Source: Educational Psychology Review. 6/15/2026, Vol. 38 Issue 1, p1-30. 30p.
Subjects: Multilevel models, Mathematical ability, Developmental biology, Cognitive ability, Reading level of students, Brain imaging, Student development, Control (Psychology)
Abstract: Reading and mathematics are core components of children's academic development and are linked to later educational, occupational, and psychosocial outcomes. Yet evidence on their predictors remains dispersed across biological, cognitive, behavioral, contextual, and neuroimaging traditions, and few syntheses have examined these literatures within a common developmental framework. In this systematic review, we synthesize 165 eligible studies to examine multilevel predictors of reading and mathematics achievement in children and adolescents and to distinguish shared from domain-specific patterns of prediction. We organize the evidence within a multilevel framework spanning perinatal and early-life conditions, cognitive skills, behavioral, emotional, and motivational processes, family and school contexts, and neuroimaging indicators. Across levels, the literature supports a developmental account in which early biological and contextual conditions are best understood as distal starting conditions, cognitive skills as the most proximal capacities for academic learning, and behavioral-emotional processes as regulatory pathways through which those capacities are expressed. Reading is more consistently associated with language-related and sound-symbol skills, whereas mathematics is more consistently associated with numerical concepts, symbolic processing, spatial resources, and math anxiety; executive function and general cognitive ability appear to provide a shared scaffold across both domains. We also include a worked multimodal neuroimaging illustration, explicitly framed as an illustrative application rather than an evidential extension, to show how the neural layer may be incorporated as a source of child-proximal markers. Overall, the review advances an evidence-calibrated multilevel framework for organizing shared and domain-specific predictors of reading and mathematics achievement and clarifies the interpretive limits of translating predictive evidence into intervention claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database: Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
Description
Abstract:Reading and mathematics are core components of children's academic development and are linked to later educational, occupational, and psychosocial outcomes. Yet evidence on their predictors remains dispersed across biological, cognitive, behavioral, contextual, and neuroimaging traditions, and few syntheses have examined these literatures within a common developmental framework. In this systematic review, we synthesize 165 eligible studies to examine multilevel predictors of reading and mathematics achievement in children and adolescents and to distinguish shared from domain-specific patterns of prediction. We organize the evidence within a multilevel framework spanning perinatal and early-life conditions, cognitive skills, behavioral, emotional, and motivational processes, family and school contexts, and neuroimaging indicators. Across levels, the literature supports a developmental account in which early biological and contextual conditions are best understood as distal starting conditions, cognitive skills as the most proximal capacities for academic learning, and behavioral-emotional processes as regulatory pathways through which those capacities are expressed. Reading is more consistently associated with language-related and sound-symbol skills, whereas mathematics is more consistently associated with numerical concepts, symbolic processing, spatial resources, and math anxiety; executive function and general cognitive ability appear to provide a shared scaffold across both domains. We also include a worked multimodal neuroimaging illustration, explicitly framed as an illustrative application rather than an evidential extension, to show how the neural layer may be incorporated as a source of child-proximal markers. Overall, the review advances an evidence-calibrated multilevel framework for organizing shared and domain-specific predictors of reading and mathematics achievement and clarifies the interpretive limits of translating predictive evidence into intervention claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:1040726X
DOI:10.1007/s10648-026-10189-6