Revisiting the definition of dyslexia.

The International Dyslexia Association definition of dyslexia was updated 20 years ago and has been referenced frequently in research and practice. In this paper, researchers from the Florida Center for Reading Research consider the components of the definition and make recommendations for revisions. These include recognizing the persistence of word-reading, decoding, and spelling difficulties, acknowledging the multifactorial causal basis of dyslexia, clarifying exclusionary factors, and denoting comorbidity with other developmental disorders. It is also suggested that the academic and psychosocial consequences of dyslexia be highlighted to reinforce a preventive service delivery model. Lastly, the inclusion of dyslexia within a specific learning disability category is supported.

Effects of a Virtually Delivered Reading and Embedded Mindset Intervention on Reading Performance for Fourth-Grader Struggling Readers.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a virtual intensive reading intervention embedded with mindset training compared to typical reading instruction in a business-as-usual (BAU) condition delivered to fourth grade students with or at-risk for reading disabilities. After screening, the 59 participants were stratified and assigned randomly to condition. Highly trained interventionists delivered the intervention one-to-one with high fidelity and student engagement during the intensive intervention. Classroom teachers delivered the BAU. We examined the effects of the intervention on a variety of standardized timed and untimed measures of word reading and decoding, reading fluency, comprehension, and mindset. We addressed two research questions: What are the effects of intensive virtual reading intervention embedded with mindset training relative to a business-as-usual comparison (BAU) on the reading outcomes of fourth grade students with or at-risk for reading disabilities? Was initial mindset related to student response to intervention? Data analyses examined the main effect and moderation using linear mixed effects models. Significant differences in reading favored the virtual treatment condition for letter and word identification (g = 0.38). No other significant effects were observed. We note limitations in our study and offer directions for future research, including the need to explore additional moderators.

Heterogeneity in Reading Achievement and Mindset of Readers with Reading Difficulties.

Recent research has focused on evaluating the relation between mindset and reading achievement. We used exploratory factor mixture models (E-FMMs) to examine the heterogeneity in reading achievement and mindset of 650 fourth graders with reading difficulties. To build E-FMMs, we conducted confirmatory factor analyses to examine the factor structure of scores of (a) mindset, (b) reading, and (c) mindset/reading combined. Our results indicated (a) a 2-factor model for mindset (General Mindset vs. Reading Mindset), (b) a 2-factor model for reading (Word Reading vs. Comprehension; four covariances), and (c) a combined model with significant correlations across mindset and reading factors. We ran E-FMMs on the combined model. Overall, we found three classes of students. We situate these results within the existing literature and discuss implications for practice and research.

Effects of Affix Type and Base Word Transparency on Students' Performance on Different Morphological Awareness Measures.

PURPOSE: We examined whether affix type and base word transparency explained variation in third- through sixth-grade students' performance on a number of morphological awareness tasks. METHOD: Third- through sixth-grade students (n > 500 at each grade) completed morphological awareness tasks from the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling, which represent the ways individuals may use their morphological awareness to support reading and spelling. Explanatory item response models were used to understand the role of affix type and base word transparency on students' performance on six morphological awareness tasks. RESULTS: For all grades, 73%-83% of variance in students' performance was due to differences across individual items. Furthermore, when task effects, affix type, and base word transparency were included simultaneously in the model, affix type was not a significant predictor; there was a significant effect of base word transparency and task. Specifically, the probability of a correct response was greater on task items in which inflected or derived words were transparent with their base word (e.g., friend > friendly) compared to items in which there was a shift in both the phonological and orthographic aspects of the base word (e.g., attend > attention). CONCLUSIONS: These findings emphasize the importance of considering base word transparency when assessing students' morphological awareness skills with less emphasis on affix type, at least for third- through sixth-grade students. Our results also point to the importance of administering a variety of morphological awareness tasks to fully capture an individual's morphological awareness skills. Collectively, researchers and practitioners should ensure assessment items on multiple measures of morphological awareness vary in their base word transparency to potentially capture a range of student performances.

Developmental trajectories of eye movements in oral and silent reading for beginning readers: a longitudinal investigation.

Eye movements provide a sensitive window into cognitive processing during reading. In the present study, we investigated beginning readers' longitudinal changes in temporal and spatial measures of eye movements during oral versus silent reading, the extent to which variation in eye movements is attributable to individual differences and text differences, and the functional form of growth trajectories of eye-movement variables. Data were from 363 English-speaking children (52% male; 59.8% White) in the US who were followed longitudinally from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Results showed a rapid decrease in temporal eye-movement measures (e.g., first fixation) and an increase in spatial eye-movement measures (initial landing position) in both oral and silent reading. The majority of variance in eye movements was attributable to individual differences whereas some variance in initial landing position was due to text differences. Most eye-movement measures had nonlinear growth trajectories where fast development tapered off near the end of Grade 3 while initial fixation count and total gaze count in silent reading had a linear growth trajectory. The findings provide a first large-scale look into the developmental progression of eye movements during oral and silent reading during a critical period when reading skills rapidly develop.

Morphological Awareness Performance Profiles of First- Through Sixth-Grade Students.

PURPOSE: We examined whether diverse profiles of strengths and weaknesses would emerge when assessing different aspects of morphological awareness in first- through sixth-grade students using a recently developed standardized test, the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling (MATRS; Apel et al., 2021). METHOD: Four thousand fifty-nine first- through sixth-grade students completed the eight morphological awareness tasks of the MATRS. The eight tasks represent the multiple ways that morphological awareness impacts both spoken and written language skills for the English language. Exploratory finite mixture models estimated the number of latent subgroups that best reflected heterogeneity in task-level performance by grade level. Specific profiles were chosen that demonstrated strong reliability and included a set of tasks that were consistent between first- and second-grade students and between third- and sixth-grade students. RESULTS: Different performance profiles emerged when the students completed multiple morphological awareness tasks. At each of the six grades (first through sixth), clusters of students performed differentially on specific tasks. CONCLUSIONS: The findings demonstrate that students can differ in patterns of strength and weaknesses of their morphological awareness given a range of tasks that assess different aspects of morphological awareness. The clinical implications of these findings suggest that by identifying students struggling in specific areas of morphological awareness, clinicians can develop and implement specific prescriptive instructional plans.

A Cumulative Risk and Resilience Model of Dyslexia.

Considerable attention and legislation are currently focused on developmental dyslexia. A major challenge to these efforts is how to define and operationalize dyslexia. In this article, we argue that rather than defining dyslexia on the basis of an underlying condition, dyslexia is best viewed as a label for an unexpected reading disability. This view fits well with a preventive approach in which risk for reading disability is identified and addressed prior to children experiencing reading failure. A risk-resilience model is introduced that proposes that dyslexia is due to the cumulative effects of risk and resilience factors. Evidence for the multifactorial causal basis of dyslexia is reviewed and potential factors that may offset this risk are considered. The implications of a cumulative risk and resilience model for early identification and intervention is discussed.

Establishing a Reading Mindset Measure: A Validation Study.

Much attention has been given to the development and validation of measures of growth mindset and its impact on learning, but the previous work has largely been focused on general measures of growth mindset. The present research was focused on establishing the psychometric properties of a Reading Mindset (RM) measure among a sample of upper elementary school students and validating the measure via its relations with standardized measures of word reading and comprehension. The RM measure was developed to capture student beliefs about their ability, learning goals, and effort during reading. Item Response Theory (IRT) was used to select items that optimally measured the RM measure from a pool of existing items from previous research (Petscher et al., 2017). The final five-item RM measure predicted reading comprehension outcomes above and beyond the effects of word reading, indicating that this measure may be an important tool for diagnosing non-cognitive areas of improvement for developing readers. The implications, limitations, and future directions for expanding upon the measure were discussed.

What is text reading fluency and is it a predictor or an outcome of reading comprehension? A longitudinal investigation.

Text reading fluency refers to the ability to read connected texts with accuracy, speed, and expression (prosody), and has garnered substantial attention as an important skill for reading comprehension. However, two fundamental questions remain-the dimensionality of text reading fluency including text reading efficiency (accuracy and speed) and reading prosody, and the directionality of the relation between text reading fluency and reading comprehension. These questions were addressed using longitudinal data from Grade 1 (Mage = 6.36 years) to Grade 3 (Mage = 8.34 years). Majority of children were White (approximately 60%) and African American (26%) with 39% to 52% from low-SES backgrounds, depending on the grade. Text reading fluency, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension were measured. Results from confirmatory factor analysis revealed that text reading fluency is a multidimensional construct with a trifactor structure, which has a general factor that captures common ability across text reading efficiency and reading prosody as well as local and specific factors that are unique beyond the general factor. However, the general factor was the most reliable factor, whereas local and specific factors were not reliable. The directionality of the relation between text reading fluency and reading comprehension was addressed by examining two competing structural equation models-text-reading-fluency-as-a-predictor/mediator model and text-reading-fluency-as-an-outcome model-and data supported the former. These results indicate that text reading fluency is a multidimensional construct, and it acts as a predictor, mediating the relations of word reading and listening comprehension to reading comprehension. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Researchers Translating the Science of Reading: Widening the Lens of Translational Science through Team Science.

Translation of the science of reading into effective classroom practice and improved reading achievement has been difficult. There is evident when we consider that despite decades of scientific research of how reading develops, many children and adolescents across the country read below expected levels.

Childhood Mistreatment, PTSD, and Substance Use in Latinx: The Role of Discrimination in an Omitted-Variable Bias.

BACKGROUND: Childhood mistreatment (CM) has been associated with adult posttraumatic disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorders (SUDs) in the general population. Few studies have examined the role of PTSD in the CM-SUD association among Latinx. This cross-sectional study evaluated a theory-driven conceptual model with a specific focus on the impact of perceived discrimination, which may interfere with these associations. METHOD: Using a nationally representative sample and structural equation modeling (SEM), the study evaluated the mediation of PTSD in the CM-SUD link, adjusting for or omitting discrimination and other sociodemographic variables that are known predictors of Latinx behavioral health. Multi-subsample analyses were then conducted to review nativity differences (US-born = 924.43% and immigrant = 1630.57%). RESULTS: The fully specified final model (model 1, covariates adjusted) failed to show a significant mediation of PTSD in the tested link, but a direct detrimental effect group of discrimination, for all Latinx. The mediation was only supported, when treating discrimination and other covariates as omitted variables (model 5), which also showed additional direct and indirect effect of CM on SUD. In subsample analyses, models of US-born and immigrant-Latinx subpopulations were identical but showed nativity differences when omitting covariates. CONCLUSION: When discrimination and other covariates were fully adjusted, Latinx exposed to trauma were more likely to develop SUD in adulthood, regardless of when traumatic exposure occurred. This unexpected finding challenges theories explaining the CM-SUD connection, suggesting possible model misspecifications of parametric SES; namely, omitting the unique impact of perceived discrimination in Latinx can lead to biased results. From a clinical standpoint, both trauma and discrimination must be addressed when assessing Latinx behavioral health.

Letter Features as Predictors of Letter-Name Acquisition in Four Languages with Three Scripts.

To expand our understanding of script-general and script-specific principles in the learning of letter names, we examined how three characteristics of alphabet letters-their frequency in printed materials, order in the alphabet, and visual similarity to other letters-relate to children's letter-name knowledge in four languages with three distinct scripts (English [N = 318; M age = 4.90], Portuguese [N = 366; M age = 5.80], Korean [N = 168; M age = 5.48], and Hebrew [N = 645; M age = 5.42]). Explanatory item response modeling analysis showed that the frequency of letters in printed materials was consistently related to letter difficulty across the four languages. There were also moderation effects for letter difficulty in English and Korean, and for discriminatory power of letters in Korean. The results suggest that exposure to letters as measured by letter frequency is a language-general mechanism in the learning of alphabet letters.

A Study of the Factor Structure, Profiles, and Concurrent Validity of the Mindset Assessment Profile Tool for Elementary Students.

This study explored the underlying latent structure of items on the Mindset Assessment Profile (MAP) tool, explore whether subgroups of students exist based on the latent structure of MAP items, and test whether subgroups were differentiated on standardized measures of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and word reading. Participants included 431 fourth grade students. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a three-factor model provided the most parsimonious fit to the data. Results of exploratory finite mixture model analysis with auxiliary regression suggested five classes of students with the students categorized as Growth Mindset - High Effort profile, having the highest, observed reading comprehension (M = 451.98, SD = 38.88) and vocabulary (M = 454.37, SD = 34.74) scores. By contrast, students categorized as Fixed Mindset - Higher Effort had the lowest observed reading comprehension and vocabulary scores. Limitations and directions for future research, and implications for using MAP assessment to inform intervention are discussed.

Modeling and Visualizing the Codevelopment of Word and Nonword Reading in Children From First Through Fourth Grade: Informing Developmental Trajectories of Children With Dyslexia.

Developmental studies examining relations between word reading (WR) and decoding in typical and dyslexic populations routinely cut the reading distribution to form distinct groups. However, dichotomizing continuous variables to study development is problematic for multiple reasons. Instead, we modeled and visualized the parallel growth of WR and nonword reading (NWR) factor scores longitudinally in a Grade 1-4 developmental sample (N = 588). The results indicate that while WR and NWR growth factors are highly related (r = .71), the relation between WR and NWR trajectories change as a function of initial WR. Results are interpreted within computational models of dyslexia in which children with dyslexia overfit orthography â†’ phonology relations at the level of the word, limiting the development of sublexical representations needed to read nonwords.

Influences of individual, text, and assessment factors on text/discourse comprehension in oral language (listening comprehension).

We investigated the contributions of multiple strands of factors-individual characteristics (struggling reader status, working memory, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, knowledge-based inference, theory of mind, comprehension monitoring), a text feature (narrative vs. expository genre), and question types (literal and inferential)-to one's performance on discourse comprehension in oral language (listening comprehension), using data from 529 second graders. Results from explanatory item response models revealed that substantial variance in listening comprehension was attributable to differences between items, texts, and children, respectively. Narrative versus expository genre distinctions explained almost all of the variance attributable to text differences. In contrast, literal versus inferential question distinctions did not explain item responses after accounting for text and reading comprehension status. However, there was a moderation between struggling reader status and question type such that struggling readers had a slightly higher (2%) probability of getting inferential questions right compared to typically developing readers, after accounting for individual and text factors. Struggling readers have a lower probability of accurate item responses than typically developing readers, but the difference disappeared once language and cognitive skills (e.g., working memory, vocabulary) were taken into consideration. The effects of text genre and question type on item responses did not differ as a function of children's language and cognitive skills. Overall, these results underscore the importance of considering individual, text, and assessment factors for children's performance in listening comprehension.

Comparing the Effects of Reading Intervention Versus Reading and Mindset Intervention for Upper Elementary Students With Reading Difficulties.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of providing mindset intervention in addition to reading intervention compared with only reading intervention for fourth graders with reading difficulties. Reading intervention was provided daily in 45 min sessions throughout the school year. Mindset intervention occurred in small groups for 24-30 min lessons. Multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) via n-level SEM was used to account for the latent variable representation of constructs, and the complex nesting and cross-classification structure of the data. Students in the reading intervention plus mindset condition significantly outperformed the business as usual condition on nonword reading (d = 0.35) as did students in the reading intervention condition (d = 0.20), who also outperformed the business as usual condition on phonological processing (d = 0.28). There were no significant differences among students in the three conditions on nonword reading, word reading, phonological processing, reading comprehension, or growth mindset. Initial reading achievement, mindset, and problem behavior did not generally moderate these findings.

Predicting Second and Third Graders' Reading Comprehension Gains: Observing Students' and Classmates Talk during Literacy Instruction using COLT.

This paper introduces a new observation system that is designed to investigate students' and teachers' talk during literacy instruction, Creating Opportunities to Learn from Text (COLT). Using video-recorded observations of 2nd-3rd grade literacy instruction (N=51 classrooms, 337 students, 151 observations), we found that nine types of student talk ranged from using non-verbal gestures to generating new ideas. The more a student talked, the greater were his/her reading comprehension (RC) gains. Classmate talk also predicted RC outcomes (total effect size=0.27). We found that 11 types of teacher talk ranged from asking simple questions to encouraging students' thinking and reasoning. Teacher talk predicted student talk but did not predict students' RC gains directly. Findings highlight the importance of each student's discourse during literacy instruction, how classmates' talk contributes to the learning environments that each student experiences, and how this affects RC gains, with implications for improving the effectiveness of literacy instruction.

Past perspectives and new opportunities for the explanatory item response model.

Models of word reading that simultaneously take into account item-level and person-level fixed and random effects are broadly known as explanatory item response models (EIRM). Although many variants of the EIRM are available, the field has generally focused on the doubly explanatory model for modeling individual differences on item responses. Moreover, the historical application of the EIRM has been a Rasch version of the model where the item discrimination values are fixed at 1.0 and the random or fixed item effects only pertain to the item difficulties. The statistical literature has advanced to allow for more robust testing of observed or latent outcomes, as well as more flexible parameterizations of the EIRM. The purpose of the present study was to compare four types of Rasch-based EIRMs (i.e., doubly descriptive, person explanatory, item explanatory, doubly explanatory) and more broadly compare Rasch and 2PL EIRM when including person-level and item-level predictors. Results showed that not only was the error variance smaller in the unconditional 2PL EIRM compared to the Rasch EIRM due to including the item discrimination random effect, but that patterns of unique item-level explanatory variables differ between the two approaches. Results are interpreted within the context of what each statistical model affords to the opportunity for describing and explaining differences in word-level performance.

Morphological Supports: Investigating Differences in How Morphological Knowledge Supports Reading Comprehension for Middle School Students With Limited Reading Vocabulary.

Purpose The current study takes a practical and theoretically grounded look at assessment of morphological knowledge and its potential to deepen understanding of how morphological knowledge supports reading comprehension for students with limited reading vocabulary. Specifically, we explore how different morphological skills support reading comprehension for students with typical reading vocabulary development compared to students with limited reading vocabulary. Method A sample of 1,140 fifth through eighth graders were assessed via a gamified, computer-adaptive measure of language that contained a morphological knowledge assessment. Links to standardized reading comprehension were explored with a focus on determining differences for the 184 students in the sample who showed limited reading vocabulary knowledge. Specifically, multiple regression analyses were used to test for the relation between morphology skills and standardized reading comprehension, as well as the moderator effect of reading vocabulary on the relation between morphological knowledge and standardized reading comprehension. Results Findings indicate that the four instructionally malleable morphological skills identified by the assessment differentially supported reading comprehension. These skills were (a) Morphological Awareness, (b) Syntactic Morphological Knowledge, (c) Semantic Morphological Knowledge, and (d) Phonological/Orthographic Morphological Knowledge. Significant interactions for students with limited reading vocabulary were shown in how the skills of Syntactic Morphological Knowledge, Semantic Morphological Knowledge, and Phonological/Orthographic Morphological Knowledge supported standardized Reading Comprehension. Conclusions Given the challenges students with limited reading vocabulary have with semantic information, Syntactic Morphological Knowledge and Phonological/Orthographic Morphological Knowledge were particularly supportive, suggesting the compensatory role of these morphological skills. In contrast, Semantic Morphological Knowledge had a negative relationship with Reading Comprehension for students with limited reading vocabulary. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.