Presented at the 1st Panhellenic Conference of Developmental Psychology,
University of Athens, 29 May–1 June 2008

The purpose of the present study was to test whether Matthew effects (Stanovich, 1986: the poor get poorer and the rich get richer...) are present in immigrant students with or without low language ability. Five hundred eighty Greek and immigrant elementary school students were tested on various standardized measures of language and ability in a 3 year (six wave) longitudinal study. Using a series of growth curve and random-intercept models, results pointed that: (a) being an immigrant was not associated with lower ability at the start of the study or their growth pattern (i.e., absence of Matthew effects), but, (b) being an immigrant with low vocabulary scores was associated with a low starting point that was unchangeable over time (i.e., a significant interaction between immigrant status and the PPVT). This latter finding suggests that immigrant students are significantly worst than native Greek students at grade 3, and their low ability is carried on through grade 5. Thus, immigrant students with low vocabulary scores are unable to “catch-up” from their slow start in reading comprehension. It is suggested that early interventions are necessary in order to provide immigrant students with the basic language skills that are prerequisite for their higher order language ability (e.g., as is reading comprehension).