This study examined whether Matthew effects were evident in developmental patterns of reading and mathematics skills from middle childhood to adolescence. We obtained standardized reading and mathematics scores at Grades 3, 5, 7 and 9 for full cohorts of students in two Australian states, NSW ( 88,958, 48% female) and Victoria ( = 65,984 49% female). Latent growth curve models were used to identify the best-fitting longitudinal trajectories of reading and mathematics, and to examine whether cumulative (i.e. a Matthew effect), compensatory, or stable interindividual differences characterized development in each domain. For both reading and mathematics, and in both samples, growth decelerated as grade levels increased, with latent basis models fitting the data better than linear models. Negative intercept-slope covariances, and decreasing variances at increasing grades in both domains indicated compensatory growth patterns, rather than cumulative patterns or Matthew effects. These results indicate that students with below average achievement at Grade 3 make greater gains to Grade 9 than their initially higher-achieving peers. Modeling growth trajectories in two longitudinal population datasets allows strong tests of theorized growth patterns for both reading and mathematics, and presents insights about developmental change in academic skills from middle childhood to adolescence.

中文翻译：

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阅读和数学中的马太效应：检查人口数据中的发展模式

这项研究检验了从童年中期到青春期的阅读和数学技能的发展模式中马太效应是否明显。我们获得了澳大利亚两个州新南威尔士州（88,958 名，48% 女性）和维多利亚州（= 65,984 名，49% 女性）所有学生在 3、5、7 和 9 年级的标准化阅读和数学成绩。潜在增长曲线模型用于确定阅读和数学的最佳拟合纵向轨迹，并检查累积（即马太效应）、补偿性或稳定的个体间差异是否表征了每个领域的发展。对于阅读和数学，在这两个样本中，随着年级水平的提高，增长速度减慢，潜在基础模型比线性模型更好地拟合数据。负截距斜率协方差以及两个域中等级增加时方差的减小表明补偿性增长模式，而不是累积模式或马太效应。这些结果表明，3 年级成绩低于平均水平的学生在 9 年级时比最初成绩较高的同龄人取得了更大的进步。在两个纵向人口数据集中对增长轨迹进行建模，可以对阅读和数学的理论增长模式进行强有力的测试，并提出有关从童年中期到青春期学术技能发展变化的见解。