Matthew Effect in Reading

The Matthew effect in reading is a theory proposed by psychologist Keith Stanovich in a 1986 paper, applying sociologist Robert Merton's earlier Matthew effect concept of cumulative advantage, named for the biblical verse describing the rich growing richer, to the specific process of learning to read, arguing that early differences in reading skill tend to widen rather than narrow over a child's schooling. Stanovich's account holds that a child who decodes text easily and early reads more, encounters more vocabulary and background knowledge through that reading, and in turn becomes a still stronger and more motivated reader, while a child who struggles with early decoding reads less and falls progressively further behind their peers, so that a relatively small gap in kindergarten or first grade can compound into a large gap in comprehension and general knowledge by later grades. The theory has been highly influential in arguments for early, intensive reading intervention, on the reasoning that the cost of remediation grows and its effectiveness shrinks the longer a struggling reader's gap is allowed to widen before it is addressed.