Letter-speech sound integration in typical reading development during the first years of formal education.

This study investigated the neural basis of letter and speech sound (LS) integration in 53 typical readers (35 girls, all White) during the first 2 years of reading education (ages 7-9). Changes in both sensory (multisensory vs unisensory) and linguistic (congruent vs incongruent) aspects of LS integration were examined. The left superior temporal cortex and bilateral inferior frontal cortex showed increasing activation for multisensory over unisensory LS over time, driven by reduced activation to speech sounds. No changes were noted in the congruency effect. However, at age nine, heightened activation to incongruent over congruent LS pairs were observed, correlating with individual differences in reading development. This suggests that the incongruency effect evolves at varying rates depending on reading skills.

Parental report of vocabulary in 3- to 6-year-old Polish children: Reliable but not valid.

BACKGROUND: For over 30 years, parental reports have been used to study the vocabulary of children under 4 years of age. Research exploring parental checklists as a measure of vocabulary in older children is very limited. Typically, authors of parental checklists report the reliability of the developed tools but do not explore validity in terms of the agreement between parental assessments and the children's actual word knowledge. AIMS: We aimed to explore the reliability and validity of a parental checklist for assessing vocabulary in children aged between 3 and 6 years. Furthermore, we aimed to evaluate the agreement between indirect (parental checklist) and direct (picture naming and picture recognition tasks) assessments of children's vocabulary. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: A group of 94 typically developing monolingual Polish-speaking children aged between 3 and 6 years were first directly tested onsite with picture naming and picture recognition tasks (Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks). Subsequently, the participants' parents completed an online checklist containing the same set of 128 items and marked all the words that they had ever heard in their child's spontaneous speech. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: The parental checklist demonstrated very high internal consistency. The scores of the parental checklist and vocabulary tasks were moderately correlated. We compared the total number of words marked by parents and the number of items correctly identified by children in the picture naming and picture recognition tasks. In picture naming, we found no difference between the children's scores and the number of words selected by parents. However, parents selected significantly fewer words than children correctly recognised in the picture recognition task. When data were analysed at the level of individual items (i.e., whether parents selected exactly the same items that children answered correctly), we found that the level of agreement was low. The level of agreement correlated negatively with the children's vocabulary; that is, the more words a child knew, the lower the agreement between the direct measure and the parental checklist. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Parental checklists should be used with caution in children aged between 3 and 6 years, especially if the assessed children have a large vocabulary and if item analysis is planned. Such checklists may be of more use in younger children or in children with limited vocabulary. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject Parental checklists are commonly used to assess the vocabulary of children younger than 4 years of age. Previous research has indicated that parental checklists are reliable in terms of internal consistency and valid in terms of predictive and convergent validity. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge This study introduces a parental checklist designed for assessing the vocabulary of monolingual Polish-speaking children aged between 3 and 6 years. Statistical analyses reveal that while the parental checklist exhibits high reliability, and the scores on the checklist correlate with direct measures of vocabulary, the agreement between parental reports and direct vocabulary measures (i.e., validity) is notably low, particularly when examining individual test items. What are the clinical implications of this work? These findings underscore the importance of exercising caution when using parental vocabulary checklists with children aged between 3 and 6 years. These checklists can serve as a replacement for direct vocabulary tests only when the general/overall score is needed. However, when specific words are the subject of interest, parental reports may not be a valid measure.

Polish norms for a set of colored drawings of 168 objects and 146 actions with predictors of naming performance.

In this study, we present the first database of pictures and their corresponding psycholinguistic norms for Polish: the CLT database. In this norming study, we used the pictures from Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLT): a set of colored drawings of 168 object and 146 actions. The CLT pictures were carefully created to provide a valid tool for multicultural comparisons. The pictures are accompanied by norms for Naming latencies, Name agreement, Goodness of depiction, Image agreement, Concept familiarity, Age of acquisition, Imageability, Lexical frequency, and Word complexity. We also report analyses of predictors of Naming latencies for pictures of objects and actions. Our results show that Name agreement, Concept familiarity, and Lexical frequency are significant predictors of Naming latencies for pictures of both objects and actions. Additionally, Age of acquisition significantly predicts Naming latencies of pictures of objects. The CLT database is freely available at osf.io/gp9qd. The full set of CLT pictures, including additional variants of pictures, is available on request at osf.io/y2cwr.

The cognitive basis of dyslexia in school-aged children: A multiple case study in a transparent orthography.

This study focuses on the role of numerous cognitive skills such as phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), visual and selective attention, auditory skills, and implicit learning in developmental dyslexia. We examined the (co)existence of cognitive deficits in dyslexia and assessed cognitive skills' predictive value for reading. First, we compared school-aged children with severe reading impairment (n = 51) to typical readers (n = 71) to explore the individual patterns of deficits in dyslexia. Children with dyslexia, as a group, presented low PA and RAN scores, as well as limited implicit learning skills. However, we found no differences in the other domains. We found a phonological deficit in 51% and a RAN deficit in 26% of children with dyslexia. These deficits coexisted in 14% of the children. Deficits in other cognitive domains were uncommon and most often coexisted with phonological or RAN deficits. Despite having a severe reading impairment, 26% of children with dyslexia did not present any of the tested deficits. Second, in a group of children presenting a wide range of reading abilities (N = 211), we analysed the relationship between cognitive skills and reading level. PA and RAN were independently related to reading abilities. Other skills did not explain any additional variance. The impact of PA and RAN on reading skills differed. While RAN was a consistent predictor of reading, PA predicted reading abilities particularly well in average and good readers with a smaller impact in poorer readers.

The brain signature of emerging reading in two contrasting languages.

Despite dissimilarities among scripts, a universal hallmark of literacy in skilled readers is the convergent brain activity for print and speech. Little is known, however, whether this differs as a function of grapheme to phoneme transparency in beginning readers. Here we compare speech and orthographic processing circuits in two contrasting languages, Polish and English, in 100 7-year-old children performing fMRI language localizer tasks. Results show limited language variation, with speech-print convergence evident mostly in left frontotemporal perisylvian regions. Correlational and intersect analyses revealed subtle differences in the strength of this coupling in several regions of interest. Specifically, speech-print convergence was higher for transparent Polish than opaque English in the right temporal area, associated with phonological processing. Conversely, speech-print convergence was higher for English than Polish in left fusiform, associated with visual word recognition. We conclude that speech-print convergence is a universal marker of reading even at the beginning of reading acquisition with minor variations that can be explained by the differences in grapheme to phoneme transparency. This finding at the earliest stages of reading acquisition conforms well with claims that reading exhibits a good deal of universality despite writing systems differences.

Prereader to beginning reader: changes induced by reading acquisition in print and speech brain networks.

BACKGROUND: Literacy acquisition is a demanding process that induces significant changes in the brain, especially in the spoken and written language networks. Nevertheless, large-scale paediatric fMRI studies are still limited. METHODS: We analyzed fMRI data to show how individual differences in reading performance correlate with brain activation for speech and print in 111 children attending kindergarten or first grade and examined group differences between a matched subset of emergent-readers and prereaders. RESULTS: Across the entire cohort, individual differences analysis revealed that reading skill was positively correlated with the magnitude of activation difference between words and symbol strings in left superior temporal, inferior frontal and fusiform gyri. Group comparisons of the matched subset of pre- and emergent-readers showed higher activity for emergent-readers in left inferior frontal, precentral, and postcentral gyri. Individual differences in activation for natural versus vocoded speech were also positively correlated with reading skill, primarily in the left temporal cortex. However, in contrast to studies on adult illiterates, group comparisons revealed higher activity in prereaders compared to readers in the frontal lobes. Print-speech coactivation was observed only in readers and individual differences analyses revealed a positive correlation between convergence and reading skill in the left superior temporal sulcus. CONCLUSIONS: These results emphasise that a child's brain undergoes several modifications to both visual and oral language systems in the process of learning to read. They also suggest that print-speech convergence is a hallmark of acquiring literacy.

Validating the psycholinguistic aspects of LITMUS-CLT: Evidence from Polish and Norwegian.

The novel assessment tool Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT) aims for comparable cross-linguistic assessment of multilingual children's lexical skills by basing each language version on two language-specific variables: age of acquisition (AoA) and complexity index (CI), a novel measure related to phonology, morphology, exposure and etymology. This article investigates the validity of this methodology, asking whether the underlying properties are robust predictors of children's performance. The Polish and Norwegian CLTs were used to assess 32 bilingual Polish-Norwegian, 34 monolingual Norwegian and 36 monolingual Polish children. The effects of AoA and CI were contrasted with frequency in child directed speech (CDS) and imageability, two known predictors of lexical development. AoA was a reliable predictor of performance within all parts of CLT, in contrast to CI. Apart from AoA, only exposure and CDS frequency had a significant effect within both monolinguals and bilinguals. These results indicate that CLT assesses lexical skills in a cross-linguistically comparable manner, but suggest a revision of the CI measure.

The effects of bilingual status on lexical comprehension and production in Maltese five-year-old children: A LITMUS-CLT study.

This article investigates whether the bilingual status of 56 typically developing children aged 60-69 months influenced their lexical abilities. The participants were identified as Maltese-dominant (Me) (n = 21), English-dominant (Em) (n = 15) and balanced bilingual (ME) (n = 20) on the basis of language exposure and proficiency, as reported by their parents. Comprehension and production of nouns and verbs were measured using Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT) in Maltese (CLT-MT) and British English (CLT-EN). Significant effects of bilingual group were identified for performance on lexical comprehension. For production, consistent bilingual group effects resulted when accurate concepts lexicalised in the test language were scored. Lexical mixing was more pronounced when children were tested in their non-dominant language. Maltese noun production elicited the highest levels of mixing across all groups. Findings point towards the need to consider specific exposure dynamics to each language within a single language pair when assessing children's bilingual lexical skills.

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT).

This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.

Neural basis of phonological awareness in beginning readers with familial risk of dyslexia-Results from shallow orthography.

Phonological processing ability is a key factor in reading acquisition, predicting its later success or causing reading problems when it is weakened. Our aim here was to establish the neural correlates of auditory word rhyming (a standard phonological measure) in 102 young children with (FHD+) and without familial history of dyslexia (FHD-) in a shallow orthography (i.e. Polish). Secondly, in order to gain a deeper understanding on how schooling shapes brain activity to phonological awareness, a comparison was made of children who had had formal literacy instruction for several months (in first grade) and those who had not yet had any formal instruction in literacy (in kindergarten). FHD+ children compared to FHD- children in the first grade scored lower in an early print task and showed longer reaction times in the in-scanner rhyme task. No behavioral differences between FHD+ and FHD- were found in the kindergarten group. On the neuronal level, overall familial risk was associated with reduced activation in the bilateral temporal, tempo-parietal and inferior temporal-occipital regions, as well as the bilateral inferior and middle frontal gyri. Subcortically, hypoactivation was found in the bilateral thalami, caudate, and right putamen in FHD+. A main effect of the children's grade was present only in the left inferior frontal gyrus, where reduced activation for rhyming was shown in first-graders. Several regions in the ventral occipital cortex, including the fusiform gyrus, and in the right middle frontal and postcentral gyri, displayed an interaction between familial risk and grade. The present results show strong influence of familial risk that may actually increase with formal literacy instruction.

Comparative evaluation of custom and standard boil and bite (self-adapted) mouthguards and their effect on the functioning of the oral cavity.

BACKGROUND: Mouthguards provide an effective preventive method against the effects of injuries sustained during sports activities, in particular cycling, football, basketball, skiing or hockey. However, when placed in the oral cavity, they can induce disorders in basic physiological functions. AIM: The objective of this clinical study was to compare the effects of various custom mouthguards with generally available standard boil and bite mouthguards on the functions of the oral cavity. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of a 168 mouthguards (five custom and three standard boil and bite mouthguards) were assessed in a questionnaire-based survey. Their negative effects on the integrity of mucosa, speech, breathing, salivary flow and taste as well as in terms of inducing gag reflex, tooth clenching and temporomandibular joint complaints were compared. RESULTS: Porida mouthguard was reported to have the most adverse effects on oral functions. In the majority of the respondents, the remaining mouthguards did not have any adverse effects on the stomatognathic system functions. CONCLUSIONS: Mouthguards do not significantly disturb basic functions of the stomatognathic system. Standard Porida mouthguards were shown to have the most unfavourable effect on oral functions.

Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words?

We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters' social or language status, but not with the raters' age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.

Identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in multilingual children: A case study tutorial.

PURPOSE: A long-standing issue in identifying developmental language disorder (DLD) in multilingual children is differentiating between effects of language experience and genuine impairment when clinicians often lack suitable norm-referenced assessments. In this tutorial we demonstrate, via a case study, that it is feasible to identify DLD in a multilingual child using the CATALISE diagnostic criteria, Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) assessment tools, and telepractice. METHOD: This tutorial features a case study of one 6-year-old Urdu-Cantonese multilingual ethnic minority child, and seven age- and grade-matched multilinguals. They were tested via Zoom using Urdu versions of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS-MAIN), the Crosslinguistic Lexical Task (LITMUS-CLT), the Crosslinguistic Nonword Repetition Test (LITMUS-CL-NWR), and the Sentence Repetition Task (LITMUS-SRep). RESULT: The child scored significantly lower in the LITMUS tests compared to her peers in her best/first language of Urdu. Together with the presence of negative functional impact and poor prognostic features, and absence of associated biomedical conditions, the findings suggest this participant could be identified as having DLD using the CATALISE diagnostic criteria. CONCLUSION: The result demonstrates the promise of this approach to collect reference data and identify DLD in multilingual children. The online LITMUS battery has the potential to support identification of multilingual DLD in any target language.

Early reading skills and the ventral occipito-temporal cortex organization.

Learning to read impacts the way the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOT) reorganizes. The postulated underlying mechanism of neuronal recycling was recently revisited. Neuroimaging data showed that voxels weakly specialized for visual processing keep their initial category selectivity (i.e., object or face processing) while acquiring an additional and stronger responsivity to written words. Here, we examined a large and diverse group of six-year-olds prior to formal literacy training (N = 72) using various data analysis techniques (univariate, multivariate, rapid adaptation) and types of stimuli (print, false fonts, houses, faces) to further explore how VOT changes and adapts to the novel skill of reading. We found that among several visual stimuli categories only print activated a wide network of language related areas outside of the bilateral visual cortex, and the level of reading skill was related to the strength of this activation, showing the development of the reading circuit. Rapid adaptation was not directly related to the level of reading skill in the young children studied here, but it clearly revealed the emergence of the reading network in readers. Most importantly, we found that the reorganization of the VOT is not in fact an "invasion" by reading acquisition-voxels previously activated for faces started to respond more for print, while at the same time keeping their previous function. We can thus conclude that the revised hypothesis of neuronal recycling is supported by our data.

Parental Report via a Mobile App in the Context of Early Language Trajectories: StarWords Study Protocol.

Social sciences researchers emphasize that new technologies can overcome the limitations of small and homogenous samples. In research on early language development, which often uses parental reports, taking the testing online might be particularly compelling. Due to logistical limitations, previous studies on bilingual children have explored the language development trajectories in general (e.g., by including few and largely set apart timepoints), or focused on small, homogeneous samples. The present study protocol presents a new, on-going study which uses new technologies to collect longitudinal data continuously from parents of multilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children. Our primary aim is to establish the developmental trajectories in Polish-British English and Polish-Norwegian bilingual children and Polish monolingual children aged 0-3 years with the use of mobile and web-based applications. These tools allow parents to report their children's language development as it progresses, and allow us to characterize children's performance in each language (the age of reaching particular language milestones). The project's novelty rests on its use of mobile technologies to characterize the bilingual and monolingual developmental trajectory from the very first words to broader vocabulary and multiword combinations.

The perceived impact of multiple sclerosis and self-management: The mediating role of coping strategies.

Low level of self-management in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) is considered to be a predominant factor that leads to poor rehabilitation efficacy. Studies focusing on the relationship between self-management and psychological variables that can be modified could contribute to expanding the knowledge needed to propose interventional programs aiming at patient activation. This study aimed to analyze whether coping strategies play a mediating role in the association between the perceived impact of MS and level of self-management in people with MS. The cross-sectional study included 382 people with MS. The participants completed the Multiple Sclerosis Self-Management Scale-Revised, Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale-29, and Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations. The study hypothesis was evaluated using mediation analysis. The STROBE checklist specifically prepared for cross-sectional research was applied in this study for reporting. Results indicate that the emotion- and problem-focused strategies of coping can be treated as mediating the association between the MS impact and level of self-management in people with MS. A negative relationship was found between the perceived MS impact and problem-oriented coping, while a positive relationship was found between problem-oriented coping and self-management. Furthermore, a positive relationship was found between the MS impact and emotion-oriented coping, while a negative relationship was found between emotion-oriented coping and self-management. The indirect role of avoidance-oriented coping was not significant. Our study confirms the role played by coping strategies in individuals' self-management. In MS, self-management determined by perceived MS impact can be controlled by decreasing emotional-coping while increasing problem-coping strategies. Our study imparts new knowledge regarding the potential interventions for improving the level of self-management in people with MS. It indicates that recognition of individuals' illness perceptions as well as maladaptive coping strategies can help health professionals identify those who might be having lower level of self-management.

Coping profiles in multiple sclerosis: Comparison of personal resources.

BACKGROUND: Identifying the profiles of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who employ similar patterns of coping may improve the understanding of how coping is associated with psychological adjustment. The purpose of this study was to identify the groups of MS patients using different coping strategies and compare the levels of psychological resources across the groups. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study 382 patients with MS completed a battery of self-report measures that assessed their use of different coping strategies, optimism, self-efficacy, health locus of control (HLC), and perception of disease. The groups with different coping profiles were selected by performing a cluster analysis. RESULTS: Five different coping profiles were highlighted and were defined as follows: "Emotional," "Temperate," "Active," "Passive," and "Problem copers." Significant differences were detected between the groups in the levels of optimism, self-efficacy, HLC, and perception of disease. CONCLUSION: Patients with MS use a varied repertoire of coping strategies, which allowed distinguishing coping profiles. Groups representing particular profiles differ in terms of psychological resources. This study contributed to increasing the interest in investigating coping profiles. Identifying subgroups of individuals based on their coping profiles and recognizing the differences is important for providing psychological support.

Separating the influences of late talking and dyslexia on brain structure.

Being a late talker constitutes a risk factor for later neurodevelopmental disorders; however, its neurobiological basis remains unexplored. We aimed to determine the unique and mutual correlates of late talking and developmental dyslexia on brain structure and behavioral outcomes in a large sample of 8- to 10-year-old children in a between-groups design (N = 120). Brain structure was examined using voxel-based morphometry (to measure gray matter volume) and surface-based morphometry (to measure gray matter volume, cortical thickness, surface area, and curvature of the cortex). Behaviorally, late talking and dyslexia are independently connected to language and literacy skills, and late talkers have difficulties in grammar, phonological awareness, and reading accuracy. Children with dyslexia show impairments in all of the above, as well as in vocabulary, spelling, reading speed, and rapid automatized naming. Neuroanatomically, dyslexia is related to lower total intracranial volume and total surface area. Late talking is related to reduced cortical thickness in the left posterior cingulate gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus, which are structures belonging to the dorsal speech articulatory-phonetic perception system. Finally, a cumulative effect of late talking and dyslexia was found on the left fusiform gray matter volume. This might explain inconsistencies in previous neuroanatomical studies of dyslexia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Neural patterns of word processing differ in children with dyslexia and isolated spelling deficit.

There is an ongoing debate concerning the extent to which deficits in reading and spelling share cognitive components and whether they rely, in a similar fashion, on sublexical and lexical pathways of word processing. The present study investigates whether the neural substrates of word processing differ in children with various patterns of reading and spelling deficits. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we compared written and auditory processing in three groups of 9-13-year olds (N = 104): (1) with age-adequate reading and spelling skills; (2) with reading and spelling deficits (i.e., dyslexia); (3) with isolated spelling deficits but without reading deficits. In visual word processing, both deficit groups showed hypoactivations in the posterior superior temporal cortex compared to typical readers and spellers. Only children with dyslexia exhibited hypoactivations in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex compared to the two groups of typical readers. This is the result of an atypical pattern of higher activity in the occipito-temporal cortex for non-linguistic visual stimuli than for words, indicating lower selectivity. The print-speech convergence was reduced in the two deficit groups. Impairments in lexico-orthographic regions in a reading-based task were associated primarily with reading deficits, whereas alterations in the sublexical word processing route could be considered common for both reading and spelling deficits. These findings highlight the partly distinct alterations of the language network related to reading and spelling deficits.

Reading Acquisition in Children: Developmental Processes and Dyslexia-Specific Effects.

OBJECTIVE: Decreased activation to print in the left ventral, dorsal, and anterior pathways has been implicated in readers with dyslexia (DRs) but also is characteristic for typical beginning readers. Because most studies have compared DRs with their age-matched peers, the observed results could represent a dyslexia phenotype or a developmental delay. This study aimed to disentangle reading and dyslexia effects using 2 control groups matched for age and skill and a longitudinal design. METHOD: Brain response for print was compared in DRs and typical readers (TRs) who, at the beginning of schooling (time point 1 [TP]; 6-7 years old), read on average 3 words per minute, as did DRs at TP1, but improved their reading to an average level, and advanced readers (ARs) who at TP1 read as well as DRs 2 years later (TP3; 8-9 years old). The TR and DR groups were tracked longitudinally to observe neurodevelopmental changes. RESULTS: At TP1, DRs did not differ from TRs. Over time, only TRs developed a neural circuit for reading in the left inferior frontal and fusiform gyri. At TP3, DRs exhibited hypo-activation in these areas compared with age-matched (TRs at TP3) and reading-matched (ARs at TP1) controls. At TP3, TRs showed hypo-activation in the left frontal and bilateral ventral occipital regions compared with ARs, but these effects were nonoverlapping with DR hypo-activations and are partly explained by IQ. CONCLUSION: Decreased activation of the left fusiform and inferior frontal gyri to print in DRs results from an atypical developmental trajectory of reading and cannot be explained solely by lower reading skills.