Socioeconomic Status and Reading Disability: Neuroanatomy and Plasticity in Response to Intervention.

Although reading disability (RD) and socioeconomic status (SES) are independently associated with variation in reading ability and brain structure/function, the joint influence of SES and RD on neuroanatomy and/or response to intervention is unknown. In total, 65 children with RD (ages 6-9) with diverse SES were assigned to an intensive, 6-week summer reading intervention (n = 40) or to a waiting-list control group (n = 25). Before and after, all children completed standardized reading assessments and magnetic resonance imaging to measure cortical thickness. At baseline, higher SES correlated with greater vocabulary and greater cortical thickness in bilateral perisylvian and supramarginal regions-especially in left pars opercularis. Within the intervention group, lower SES was associated with both greater reading improvement and greater cortical thickening across broad, bilateral occipitotemporal and temporoparietal regions following the intervention. Additionally, treatment responders (n = 20), compared with treatment nonresponders (n = 19), exhibited significantly greater cortical thickening within similar regions. The waiting control and nonresponder groups exhibited developmentally typical, nonsignificant cortical thinning during this time period. These findings indicate that effective summer reading intervention is coupled with cortical growth, and is especially beneficial for children with RD who come from lower-SES home environments.

Relation of white-matter microstructure to reading ability and disability in beginning readers.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 31(5) of Neuropsychology (see record 2017-22816-001). Errors in the dataset owing to two incorrect scores have skewed results. In the 2nd paragraph of the Results section, the 2nd sentence should read: "Within the typical reader group, FA in the left AF correlated negatively with pseudoword reading (WRMT-III Word Attack: rs = .37, p = .064), but not real-word reading (WRMT-III Word Identification: rs = .07, p = .75)." The 4th sentence of the 3rd paragraph should read: "The negative correlation between FA and Word Attack in the typical reader group was driven by Daxial (Dradial: rs = .19, p = .373, Daxial: rs = .38, p = .060)." The 2nd sentence of the 4th paragraph should read: "Results of this analysis replicated those of the larger reading disability group, with a statistically greater reduction of FA in this more severely affected group (p = .008) that was associated with a significant increase in Dradial (p = .008) and no difference in Daxial (p = .47)." In Table 1, for the typical reader group, the resulting values should read: age, 94.00 ± 7.66; KBIT-2-Matrices, 118.31 ± 15.24; WRMT-III-Word Identification, 119.00 ± 9.33; WRMT-III-Word Attack, 114.04 ± 9.31; and TOWRE-2-Sight Word Efficiency, 114.48 ± 8.07. For the reading disability group, the resulting values for age and TOWRE-2- Phonemic Decoding Efficiency should be 93.65 ± 7.81 and 81.76 ± 9.33, respectively. The p values for age and KBIT-2-Matrices should be .87 and .172, respectively. In Figure 3, the image for the typical reader group has been replaced. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Objective: We examined the white-matter microstructure of the left arcuate fasciculus, which has been associated with reading ability, in beginning readers with or without reading disability. METHOD: Groups were typically reading children (n = 26) or children with reading disability (n = 26), Ages 6-9, and equated on nonverbal cognitive abilities. Diffusion-weighted images were collected and TRACULA was used to extract fractional anisotropy measures from the left arcuate fasciculus. RESULTS: White-matter microstructure was altered in children with reading disability, who exhibited significantly reduced fractional anisotropy in the left arcuate fasciculus. Among typically reading children, lower fractional anisotropy of the left arcuate fasciculus was associated with superior pseudoword reading performance. Both the group differences and variation in reading scores among the children with reading disability were associated with radial diffusivity (but not axial diffusivity), whereas variation in reading scores among typically reading children was associated with axial diffusivity (but not radial diffusivity). CONCLUSIONS: The paradoxical findings that lower fractional anisotropy was associated both with reading disability and also with better phonological awareness in typical reading development suggest that there are different maturational trajectories of white-matter microstructure in typical readers and children with reading disability, and that this difference is unique to the beginning stages of reading acquisition. The finding that reading disability was associated with radial diffusivity, but that variation in ability among typically developing readers was associated with axial diffusivity, suggests that different neural mechanisms may be associated with reading development in children with or without reading disability. (PsycINFO Database Record

Impact of Intensive Summer Reading Intervention for Children With Reading Disabilities and Difficulties in Early Elementary School.

Efficacy of an intensive reading intervention implemented during the nonacademic summer was evaluated in children with reading disabilities or difficulties (RD). Students (ages 6-9) were randomly assigned to receive Lindamood-Bell's Seeing Stars program ( n = 23) as an intervention or to a waiting-list control group ( n = 24). Analysis of pre- and posttesting revealed significant interactions in favor of the intervention group for untimed word and pseudoword reading, timed pseudoword reading, oral reading fluency, and symbol imagery. The interactions mostly reflected (a) significant declines in the nonintervention group from pre- to posttesting, and (2) no decline in the intervention group. The current study offers direct evidence for widening differences in reading abilities between students with RD who do and do not receive intensive summer reading instruction. Intervention implications for RD children are discussed, especially in relation to the relevance of summer intervention to prevent further decline in struggling early readers.

Dysfunction of Rapid Neural Adaptation in Dyslexia.

Identification of specific neurophysiological dysfunctions resulting in selective reading difficulty (dyslexia) has remained elusive. In addition to impaired reading development, individuals with dyslexia frequently exhibit behavioral deficits in perceptual adaptation. Here, we assessed neurophysiological adaptation to stimulus repetition in adults and children with dyslexia for a wide variety of stimuli, spoken words, written words, visual objects, and faces. For every stimulus type, individuals with dyslexia exhibited significantly diminished neural adaptation compared to controls in stimulus-specific cortical areas. Better reading skills in adults and children with dyslexia were associated with greater repetition-induced neural adaptation. These results highlight a dysfunction of rapid neural adaptation as a core neurophysiological difference in dyslexia that may underlie impaired reading development. Reduced neurophysiological adaptation may relate to prior reports of reduced behavioral adaptation in dyslexia and may reveal a difference in brain functions that ultimately results in a specific reading impairment.