The impact of temporal processing on reading in dyslexia with rapid automatized naming deficits.

In the present study, we aimed to investigate the different impacts of temporal processing on reading by Chinese children with and without dyslexia. In total, 27 children with dyslexia who had a deficit in rapid automatized naming (RAN) (D_R), 37 children with dyslexia who had deficits in both RAN and phonological awareness (PA) (D_RP), and 40 typically developing children (TD) were recruited in Taiwan. The children were asked to complete non-verbal intelligence, PA, RAN, Chinese character reading tasks and an auditory temporal order judgement (ATOJ) task. Our results of a multiple regression model showed that the ATOJ accounted for unique variances in the reading differences between the children in the D_R and TD groups; performance was controlled for non-verbal intelligence, PA and RAN tasks. Theoretically, we provide possible explanations for the controversial findings in the field of Chinese children with dyslexia and, practically, suggest different interventions should be provided for children with dyslexia with different underlying impairments.

Elevated unanticipated acoustic startle reactivity in dyslexia.

People with dyslexia, a neurodevelopmental disorder of reading, are highly attuned to the emotional world. Compared with their typically developing peers, children with dyslexia exhibit greater autonomic nervous system reactivity and facial behaviour to emotion- and empathy-inducing film clips. Affective symptoms, such as anxiety, are also more common in children with dyslexia than in those without. Here, we investigated whether the startle response, an automatic reaction that lies at the interface of emotion and reflex, is elevated in dyslexia. We measured facial behaviour, electrodermal reactivity (a sympathetic nervous system measure) and emotional experience in response to a 100 ms, 105 dB unanticipated acoustic startle task in 30 children with dyslexia and 20 comparison children without dyslexia (aged 7-13) who were matched on age, sex and nonverbal reasoning. Our results indicated that the children with dyslexia had greater total facial behaviour and electrodermal reactivity to the acoustic startle task than the children without dyslexia. Across the sample, greater electrodermal reactivity during the startle predicted greater parent-reported anxiety symptoms. These findings contribute to an emerging picture of heightened emotional reactivity in dyslexia and suggest accentuated sympathetic nervous system reactivity may contribute to the elevated anxiety that is often seen in this population.

Feedback timing-modulated weather prediction reveals relative deficits in both procedural and declarative learning in adults with dyslexia.

A topic of recent debate is the hypothesis that deficits associated with developmental disorders of language, such as reading disability, can be explained by a selective weakness in procedural memory. Adults with (n = 29; RD) and without (n = 29; TD) reading disability completed a weather prediction task under immediate and delayed feedback conditions, that rely on the striatal (procedural) and hippocampal (declarative) circuits, respectively. We examined trial-by-trial accuracy by feedback condition (immediate vs. delayed) and group (RD vs. TD). In the immediate feedback condition, we found the TD group to have a higher learning rate than the RD group. In the delayed feedback condition, we found the TD group reach a high level of accuracy early, and outperform the RD group for the duration of the task. The TD group also made gains in reaction time under both conditions, while the RD group slowed in their responses. Taken together, it appears that while procedural memory is indeed impaired in adults with reading disability, to a lesser extent, declarative memory is also affected. This lends partial support to the PDH, and more broadly to the position that reading disability is associated with general (non-linguistic) difficulties in learning.

The relation between reading and externalizing behavior: a correlational meta-analysis.

Reading proficiency is important because it has life-long consequences and influences success in other academic areas. Many students with behavior problems are poor readers and many students with learning disabilities have more behavior problems than their typical peers. We conducted a correlational meta-analysis to examine the association between reading and externalizing behavior in students ages 5-12. We identified 33 studies that reported 88 effect sizes. Using a random-effects linear regression model with robust variance estimation, we found a significant, negative correlation (r= -0.1698, SE = 0.01, p < 0.0001) between reading and externalizing behavior. We tested several moderators related to measurement and sample characteristics. We found that rater type, behavior dimension (e.g., aggression), time between longitudinal measurement points, age of the sample, and percentage male of the sample moderated the relation between reading and behavior. Whether the reading assessment measured comprehension or word reading and socioeconomic status of the sample did not moderate the relation. Understanding the association between reading and externalizing behavior has implications for disability identification and intervention practices for children in elementary school. Future research should examine shared cognitive factors and environmental influences that explain the relation between the constructs.

The gift of dyslexia: what is the harm in it?

Dyslexia, characterized by word reading and spelling deficits, has historically been viewed through a medical model of disability. However, a countermovement has emerged, emphasizing the strengths and abilities of neurodiverse individuals, including those with dyslexia. The concept of neurodiversity, which was initially introduced to help inform understanding of a mild form of autism, has expanded to include dyslexia. The expansion has occurred alongside a similar portrayal of dyslexia as an advantage that comes with specific gifts, creating a positive stereotype. While intended to empower individuals with dyslexia, the translation of the concept of neurodiversity to dyslexia in this way can inadvertently stigmatize and isolate those who do not fit this positive stereotype of dyslexia. This review, following a perspective review article format, synthesizes existing literature on the purported gifts of dyslexia and the implications of both negative and positive stereotypes on the well-being of individuals with dyslexia. The findings of this review underscore the importance of dispelling myths about dyslexia and advocating against the use of stereotypes, both negative and positive, in portraying dyslexia. Doing so will help remove the harmful effects of stigmatization, stereotype threat, and the potential of a fixed mindset inherent to being stereotyped.

Electrophysiological markers of orthographic pattern learning in school-aged children with reading challenges: An ERP investigation.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies suggested that children with reading difficulty have impaired statistical learning ability in extracting distributional orthographic regularities. However, the neural mechanisms underlying have not been fully investigated. AIMS: The current study aimed to identify the electrophysiological markers and to examine the neural underpinnings of statistical learning of orthographic regularities in children with reading difficulties. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Using the event-related potentials (ERPs) and the orthographic learning task, 157 children were exposed to a sequence of artificial pseudocharacters with varying levels of positional and semantic consistency (low at 60 %, moderate at 80 %, and high at 100 %). OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Poor readers elicited an increased N170 response in the low consistency and a lack of left-lateralized P300 effect when learning positional regularities of radicals. Similarly, larger N170 effects were observed in poor readers, while similar N400 effects were found in both poor and average readers when learning semantic regularities of radicals. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Our findings indicate that poor readers may have trouble using statistical information for early-stage orthographic pattern extraction, yet they can identify semantic inconsistencies after sufficient exposure. These results deepen our understanding of the neural mechanisms involved in statistical learning for poor readers and aid in improving criteria for differentiating between typically developing children and those with reading challenges.

Lexical Morphology as a Source of Risk and Resilience for Learning to Read With Dyslexia: An fNIRS Investigation.

PURPOSE: We examined the neurocognitive bases of lexical morphology in children of varied reading abilities to understand the role of meaning-based skills in learning to read with dyslexia. METHOD: Children completed auditory morphological and phonological awareness tasks during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. We first examined the relation between lexical morphology and phonological processes in typically developing readers (Study 1, N = 66, Mage = 8.39), followed by a more focal inquiry into lexical morphology processes in dyslexia (Study 2, N = 50, Mage = 8.62). RESULTS: Typical readers exhibited stronger engagement of language neurocircuitry during the morphology task relative to the phonology task, suggesting that morphological analyses involve synthesizing multiple components of sublexical processing. This effect was stronger for more analytically complex derivational affixes (like + ly) than more semantically transparent free base morphemes (snow + man). In contrast, children with dyslexia exhibited stronger activation during the free base condition relative to derivational affix condition. Taken together, the findings suggest that although children with dyslexia may struggle with derivational morphology, they may also use free base morphemes' semantic information to boost word recognition. CONCLUSION: This study informs literacy theories by identifying an interaction between reading ability, word structure, and how the developing brain learns to recognize words in speech and print. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.25944949.

Eyes on CVI: Eye movements unveil distinct visual search patterns in Cerebral Visual Impairment compared to ADHD, dyslexia, and neurotypical children.

Visual search problems are often reported in children with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). To tackle the clinical challenge of objectively differentiating CVI from other neurodevelopmental disorders, we developed a novel test battery. Visual search tasks were coupled with verbal and gaze-based measurements. Two search tasks were performed by children with CVI (n: 22; mean age (SD): 9.63 (.46) years) ADHD (n: 32; mean age (SD): 10.51 (.25) years), dyslexia (n: 28; mean age (SD): 10.29 (.20) years) and neurotypical development (n: 44; mean age (SD): 9.30 (.30) years). Children with CVI had more impaired search performance compared to all other groups, especially in crowded and unstructured displays and even when they had normal visual acuity. In-depth gaze-based analyses revealed that this group searched in overall larger areas and needed more time to recognize a target, particularly after their initial fixation on the target. Our gaze-based approach to visual search offers new insights into the distinct search patterns and behaviours of children with CVI. Their tendency to overlook targets whilst fixating on it, point towards higher-order visual function (HOVF) deficits. The novel method is feasible, valid, and promising for clinical differential-diagnostic evaluation between CVI, ADHD and dyslexia, and for informing individualized training.

Shared and task-specific brain functional differences across multiple tasks in children with developmental dyslexia.

Different tasks have been used in examining the neural functional differences associated with developmental dyslexia (DD), and consequently, different findings have been reported. However, very few studies have systematically compared multiple tasks in understanding what specific task differences each brain region is associated with. In this study, we employed an auditory rhyming task, a visual rhyming task, and a visual spelling task, in order to investigate shared and task-specific neural differences in Chinese children with DD. First, we found that children with DD had reduced activation in the opercular part of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) only in the two rhyming tasks, suggesting impaired phonological analysis. Children with DD showed functional differences in the right lingual gyrus/inferior occipital gyrus only in the two visual tasks, suggesting deficiency in their visuo-orthographic processing. Moreover, children with DD showed reduced activation in the left dorsal inferior frontal gyrus and increased activation in the right precentral gyrus across all of the three tasks, suggesting neural signatures of DD in Chinese. In summary, our study successfully separated brain regions associated with differences in orthographic processing, phonological processing, and general lexical processing in DD. It advances our understanding about the neural mechanisms of DD.

Infant neural speech encoding is associated with pre-reading skill development.

OBJECTIVE: We longitudinally investigated whether infant P1 and N2 ERPs recorded in newborns and at 28 months could predict pre-reading skills at 28 months and 4-5 years. METHODS: We recorded ERPs to a pseudoword in newborns and at 28 months in a sample over-represented by infants with familial dyslexia risk. Using multiple linear regression models, we examined P1 and N2 associations with pre-reading skills at 28 months and 4-5 years. RESULTS: Shorter latencies of the newborn P1 predicted faster serial naming at 28 months. Larger amplitudes and shorter latencies of P1 at 28 months predicted better serial naming abilities and auditory working memory across the pre-reading stage. Right-lateralized P1 and N2 were related to poorer pre-reading skills. CONCLUSIONS: Infant ERPs, particularly P1, providing information about neural speech encoding abilities, are associated with pre-reading skill development. SIGNIFICANCE: Infant and early childhood neural speech encoding abilities may work as early predictive markers of reading development and impairment. This study may help to plan early interventions targeting phonological processing to prevent or ameliorate learning deficits.

Spelling development of children with and without reading difficulties throughout elementary grades: evidence from the Greek orthography.

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the development of spelling in a large sample (N = 503, boys: N = 219) of Greek-speaking children with (N = 41) and without (N = 462) reading difficulties. Children were initially tested in Grades 2-4 and then at five consecutive measurement points over a 3-year period, focusing on how initial reading ability, grade, and gender may moderate the rate of spelling growth. Individual growth curve modeling revealed continuous growth of spelling performance in the total sample, although the growth rate decreased over time for children first tested in Grades 3-4. Spelling growth rate was also significantly slower among children with reading difficulties between Grades 2-4 and 3-5. The two reading groups displayed similar growth rates between Grades 4 and 6. Spelling growth rates did not vary significantly with gender. Overall, our study highlights the persistence of spelling difficulties even after 6 years of systematic teaching in children with reading difficulties. The severe and persistent spelling deficits of Greek-speaking children with reading difficulties may be attributed to the rich morphological system of the Greek language, the intermediate Greek orthographic transparency (in the direction of writing), and their limited experience with print.

Alterations in neural activation in the ventral frontoparietal network during complex magnocellular stimuli in developmental dyslexia associated with READ1 deletion.

BACKGROUND: An intronic deletion within intron 2 of the DCDC2 gene encompassing the entire READ1 (hereafter, READ1d) has been associated in both children with developmental dyslexia (DD) and typical readers (TRs), with interindividual variation in reading performance and motion perception as well as with structural and functional brain alterations. Visual motion perception -- specifically processed by the magnocellular (M) stream -- has been reported to be a solid and reliable endophenotype of DD. Hence, we predicted that READ1d should affect neural activations in brain regions sensitive to M stream demands as reading proficiency changes. METHODS: We investigated neural activations during two M-eliciting fMRI visual tasks (full-field sinusoidal gratings controlled for spatial and temporal frequencies and luminance contrast, and sensitivity to motion coherence at 6%, 15% and 40% dot coherence levels) in four subject groups: children with DD with/without READ1d, and TRs with/without READ1d. RESULTS: At the Bonferroni-corrected level of significance, reading skills showed a significant effect in the right polar frontal cortex during the full-field sinusoidal gratings-M task. Regardless of the presence/absence of the READ1d, subjects with poor reading proficiency showed hyperactivation in this region of interest (ROI) compared to subjects with better reading scores. Moreover, a significant interaction was found between READ1d and reading performance in the left frontal opercular area 4 during the 15% coherent motion sensitivity task. Among subjects with poor reading performance, neural activation in this ROI during this specific task was higher for subjects without READ1d than for READ1d carriers. The difference vanished as reading skills increased. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings showed a READ1d-moderated genetic vulnerability to alterations in neural activation in the ventral attentive and salient networks during the processing of relevant stimuli in subjects with poor reading proficiency.

Mediators of working memory and reading in a sample of children with reading difficulty: The roles of phonemic awareness and rapid automatized naming.

Working memory (WM) has been consistently linked to reading. However, the mechanism(s) linking WM to reading remain unclear. WM may indirectly exert an effect onto reading through mediators such as phonemic awareness (PA) and/or rapid automatized naming (RAN). In a sample of children with reading difficulty (n = 117), separate mediation analyses tested direct and indirect (through PA and RAN) effects of WM on untimed word decoding and recognition (i.e., basic reading skills) and timed word decoding and recognition (i.e., reading fluency). WM exerted a direct effect on basic reading skills and reading fluency. For basic reading skills, there was a significant indirect effect of WM on reading through the mediation of PA (but not through RAN). By contrast, for reading fluency, there was a significant indirect effect of WM on reading through the mediation of RAN (but not through PA). Findings reinforce the importance of WM, PA, and RAN for broad reading skills, while offering a mechanistic explanation for why poor PA and/or RAN may differentially lead to reading difficulty.

Perceptual Adaptation to Noise-Vocoded Speech by Lip-Read Information: No Difference between Dyslexic and Typical Readers.

Auditory speech can be difficult to understand but seeing the articulatory movements of a speaker can drastically improve spoken-word recognition and, on the longer-term, it helps listeners to adapt to acoustically distorted speech. Given that individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) have sometimes been reported to rely less on lip-read speech than typical readers, we examined lip-read-driven adaptation to distorted speech in a group of adults with DD ( N = 29) and a comparison group of typical readers ( N = 29). Participants were presented with acoustically distorted Dutch words (six-channel noise-vocoded speech, NVS) in audiovisual training blocks (where the speaker could be seen) interspersed with audio-only test blocks. Results showed that words were more accurately recognized if the speaker could be seen (a lip-read advantage), and that performance steadily improved across subsequent auditory-only test blocks (adaptation). There were no group differences, suggesting that perceptual adaptation to disrupted spoken words is comparable for dyslexic and typical readers. These data open up a research avenue to investigate the degree to which lip-read-driven speech adaptation generalizes across different types of auditory degradation, and across dyslexic readers with decoding versus comprehension difficulties.

Functional connectivity is linked to working memory differences in children with reading learning disability.

Reading learning disability (RLD) is characterized by a specific difficulty in learning to read that is not better explained by an intellectual disability, lack of instruction, psychosocial adversity, or a neurological disorder. According to the domain-general hypothesis, a working memory deficit is the primary problem. Working memory in this population has recently been linked to altered resting-state functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN), salience network (SN), and frontoparietal network (FPN) compared to that in typically developing individuals. The main purpose of the present study was to compare the within-network functional connectivity of the DMN, SN, FPN, and reading network in two groups of children with RLD: a group with lower-than-average working memory (LWM) and a group with average working memory (AWM). All subjects underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and data were analyzed from a network perspective using the network brain statistics framework. The results showed that the LWM group had significantly weaker connectivity in a network that involved brain regions in the DMN, SN, and FPN than the AWM group. Although there was no significant difference between groups in reading network in the present study, other studies have shown relationship of the connectivity of the angular gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobe with the phonological process of reading. The results suggest that although there are significant differences in functional connectivity in the associated networks between children with LWM and AWM, the distinctive cognitive profile has no specific effect on the reading network.

Rapid online assessment of reading and phonological awareness (ROAR-PA).

Phonological awareness (PA) is at the foundation of reading development: PA is introduced before formal reading instruction, predicts reading development, is a target for early intervention, and is a core mechanism in dyslexia. Conventional approaches to assessing PA are time-consuming and resource intensive: assessments are individually administered and scoring verbal responses is challenging and subjective. Therefore, we introduce a rapid, automated, online measure of PA-The Rapid Online Assessment of Reading-Phonological Awareness-that can be implemented at scale without a test administrator. We explored whether this gamified, online task is an accurate and reliable measure of PA and predicts reading development. We found high correlations with standardized measures of PA (CTOPP-2, r = .80) for children from Pre-K through fourth grade and exceptional reliability (α = .96). Validation in 50 first and second grade classrooms showed reliable implementation in a public school setting with predictive value of future reading development.

A systematic review of factors that impact reading comprehension in children with developmental language disorders.

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have a high rate of co-occurring reading difficulties. The current study aims to (i) examine which factors within the Active View of Reading (AVR; Duke & Cartwright, 2021) apply to individuals with DLD and (ii) investigate other possible factors that relate to reading comprehension ability in individuals with DLD, outside the components in the AVR. Electronic database search and journal hand-search yielded 5058 studies published before March 2022 related to reading comprehension in children with DLD. 4802 articles were excluded during abstract screening, yielding 256 studies eligible for full-text review. Following full-text review, 44 studies were included and further coded for demographics, language of assessment, description of reported disabilities, behavioral assessment, and reading comprehension assessment. While the results aligned with the AVR model, three additional factors were identified as significantly relating to reading comprehension abilities in children with DLD: expressive language (oral and written), question types of reading assessment, and language disorder history. Specifically, expressive language was positively associated with reading comprehension ability, while resolved DLD showed higher reading comprehension abilities than persistent DLD. Furthermore, children with DLD may face additional difficulties in comprehending inference-based questions. This study provides factors for researchers, educators, and clinical professionals to consider when evaluating the reading comprehension of individuals with DLD. Future research should further explore the relative importance of factors of the AVR to reading comprehension outcomes throughout development.

Childhood Reading Ability and Pain in Childhood Through to Midlife.

Dyslexia and pain have recently been shown to correlate on a genetic level, but there has been little exploration of this association on the phenotypic level despite reports of increased pain in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, which commonly co-occurs with dyslexia. In this study we test for an association between reading ability, which is the primary feature of dyslexia, and pain both in childhood and adulthood. Logistic regression modeling was used to test associations between reading ability in childhood and pain from childhood to midlife in a large UK birth cohort; the 1958 National Child Development Study. Associations were found between poor childhood reading ability and increased headache and abdominal pain in childhood, and between poor childhood reading ability and headache, eye pain, back pain, and rheumatism in adulthood. Mediation analyses indicated that socioeconomic status (defined by employment) fully mediated the association between poor reading ability in childhood and back pain at age 42. By contrast, the association between reading ability and eye pain acted independently of socioeconomic status. Different mechanisms were thus indicated for the association of reading with different pain types, including manual labor and a potential shared biological pathway. PERSPECTIVE: This study found a relationship between poor reading ability in childhood and pain in childhood and adulthood. Those with reading difficulties should be monitored for pain symptoms. Future research may uncover shared biological mechanisms, increasing our understanding of pain and potential treatments.

Subtitled speech: the neural mechanisms of ticker-tape synaesthesia.

The acquisition of reading modifies areas of the brain associated with vision and with language, in addition to their connections. These changes enable reciprocal translation between orthography and the sounds and meaning of words. Individual variability in the pre-existing cerebral substrate contributes to the range of eventual reading abilities, extending to atypical developmental patterns, including dyslexia and reading-related synaesthesias. The present study is devoted to the little-studied but highly informative ticker-tape synaesthesia, in which speech perception triggers the vivid and irrepressible perception of words in their written form in the mind's eye. We scanned a group of 17 synaesthetes and 17 matched controls with functional MRI, while they listened to spoken sentences, words, numbers or pseudowords (Experiment 1), viewed images and written words (Experiment 2) or were at rest (Experiment 3). First, we found direct correlates of the ticker-tape synaesthesia phenomenon: during speech perception, as ticker-tape synaesthesia was active, synaesthetes showed over-activation of left perisylvian regions supporting phonology and of the occipitotemporal visual word form area, where orthography is represented. Second, we provided support to the hypothesis that ticker-tape synaesthesia results from atypical relationships between spoken and written language processing: the ticker-tape synaesthesia-related regions overlap closely with cortices activated during reading, and the overlap of speech-related and reading-related areas is larger in synaesthetes than in controls. Furthermore, the regions over-activated in ticker-tape synaesthesia overlap with regions under-activated in dyslexia. Third, during the resting state (i.e. in the absence of current ticker-tape synaesthesia), synaesthetes showed increased functional connectivity between left prefrontal and bilateral occipital regions. This pattern might reflect a lowered threshold for conscious access to visual mental contents and might imply a non-specific predisposition to all synaesthesias with a visual content. These data provide a rich and coherent account of ticker-tape synaesthesia as a non-detrimental developmental condition created by the interaction of reading acquisition with an atypical cerebral substrate.

Handwriting difficulties in children with dyslexia: Poorer legibility in dictation and alphabet tasks, slowness in the alphabet task.

Several studies have shown that children with dyslexia (DYS), in addition to their reading and spelling deficits, encounter handwriting difficulties that are still poorly understood in terms of their nature and origin. The present study aimed to better understand the handwriting difficulties of children with DYS by comparing their handwriting quality and speed in two tasks, a dictation task and an alphabet task, which required fewer spelling skills than the dictation task. Twenty-nine French-speaking children (Mage = 9.5 years) participated in the study, including 18 children with DYS and nine typically developing (TD) children matched on chronological age. The children performed control tasks, a dictation task with words varying in graphic and orthographic complexity and an alphabet writing task. Accuracy, handwriting quality (legibility), and fluency (speed, writing and pause time) were carefully measured using a digital tablet. GLMM analysis and t tests showed that children with DYS made more aesthetic errors (handwriting quality) in both the dictation and alphabet task than TD children. They also wrote more slowly than TD children in the alphabet task (speed, pause time). These findings suggest that children with DYS present handwriting difficulties, even in a simple alphabet task. In dictation, they seem to favour speed at the expense of handwriting quality.