The short- and long-term predictions of reading accuracy and speed from paired-associate learning.

Cross-sectional studies have established that performance on paired-associate learning (PAL) tasks is associated with reading performance. There are good reasons to expect such a relationship because learning to read involves learning the sounds of individual letters and possibly also sounds of strings of letters (e.g., spelling patterns). However, results from longitudinal studies have been mixed. A closer look at these studies suggests that PAL may be related to development of accuracy rather than speed in reading. This suggestion was investigated directly in the current longitudinal study. The study followed 137 students from Grade 0 (kindergarten) to Grade 5. In Grade 0, they completed measures of PAL, letter knowledge, phoneme awareness, and rapid automatized naming (RAN). In Grades 1 and 5, decoding accuracy was measured with the addition of decoding speed in Grade 5. PAL in Grade 0 was found to be a unique predictor of decoding accuracy in Grades 1 and 5 after controlling for Grade 0 letter knowledge, phoneme awareness, and RAN. PAL in Grade 0 even contributed to Grade 5 decoding accuracy after also controlling for Grade 1 decoding. Zero-order correlations between PAL and Grade 5 decoding speed were nonsignificant and close to zero. The results indicate that PAL measures a trait that may influence reading development over a substantial amount of time. Possible roles of PAL in decoding development over time are discussed, for example, how verbal learning may be a core component in the acquisition of associations between letter patterns (spelling patterns) and their pronunciation.

The emergence of automaticity in reading: Effects of orthographic depth and word decoding ability on an adjusted Stroop measure.

How long does it take for word reading to become automatic? Does the appearance and development of automaticity differ as a function of orthographic depth (e.g., French vs. English)? These questions were addressed in a longitudinal study of English and French beginning readers. The study focused on automaticity as obligatory processing as measured in the Stroop test. Measures of decoding ability and the Stroop effect were taken at three time points during first grade (and during second grade in the United Kingdom) in 84 children. The study is the first to adjust the classic Stroop effect for inhibition (of distracting colors). The adjusted Stroop effect was zero in the absence of reading ability, and it was found to develop in tandem with decoding ability. After a further control for decoding, no effects of age or orthography were found on the adjusted Stroop measure. The results are in line with theories of the development of whole word recognition that emphasize the importance of the acquisition of the basic orthographic code.

Early Identification of Reading Difficulties: A Screening Strategy that Adjusts the Sensitivity to the Level of Prediction Accuracy.

Early screening for reading difficulties before the onset of instruction is desirable because it allows intervention that is targeted at prevention rather than remediation of reading difficulties. However, early screening may be too inaccurate to effectively allocate resources to those who need them. The present study compared the accuracy of early screening before the onset of formal reading instruction with late screening six months into the first year of instruction. The study followed 164 Danish students from the end of Grade 0 to the end of Grade 2. Early screening included measures of phonemic awareness, rapid naming, letter knowledge, paired associate learning, and reading. Late screening included only reading. Results indicated that reading measures improved substantially as predictors over the first six months of Grade 1, to the point where late reading measures alone provided as much information as the early measures combined. In the light of these results and a less than perfect early screening accuracy, a new strategy for screening is introduced and discussed. The strategy proposes multi-point screening with gradually increasing sensitivity to strike a balance between manageable screening procedures and outcomes and early identification of students who are most likely in need of extra resources. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A national test of dyslexia.

Different definitions and tests of dyslexia can cause unfairness and make life difficult for people with dyslexia as well as for the professionals. In 2012, the Danish government decided to support the fight against dyslexia. The government issued a public tender for the development of "a standardized, electronically administered test of dyslexia for use […] from primary Grade 3 and up through all educational levels to 5-year university education." The present paper reports from the development of this National Dyslexia Test. The paper focuses on the definition of dyslexia and the composition, reliability, and validity of the test. Data from the development of the test demonstrate the psychometric properties of the test. Reliability was indicated by a high agreement between the two (computer-administered) measures that are part of the test. External convergent validity was indicated by a high agreement between test results and results from prior practice and by agreement between test results and reading comprehension of educational texts. The paper concludes with a discussion of the practical uses and potential issues with the test since its release in 2015.

A cohort of balanced reciprocal translocations associated with dyslexia: identification of two putative candidate genes at DYX1.

Dyslexia is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders where likely many genes are involved in the pathogenesis. So far six candidate dyslexia genes have been proposed, and two of these were identified by rare chromosomal translocations in affected individuals. By systematic re-examination of all translocation carriers in Denmark, we have identified 16 different translocations associated with dyslexia. In four families, where the translocation co-segregated with the phenotype, one of the breakpoints concurred (at the cytogenetic level) with either a known dyslexia linkage region--at 15q21 (DYX1), 2p13 (DYX3) and 1p36 (DYX8)--or an unpublished linkage region at 19q13. As a first exploitation of this unique cohort, we identify three novel candidate dyslexia genes, ZNF280D and TCF12 at 15q21, and PDE7B at 6q23.3, by molecular mapping of the familial translocation with the 15q21 breakpoint.

Language-learning impairments: a 30-year follow-up of language-impaired children with and without psychiatric, neurological and cognitive difficulties.

AIMS: This study investigated the long-term consequences of language impairments for academic, educational and socio-economic outcomes. It also assessed the unique contributions of childhood measures of speech and language, non-verbal IQ, and of psychiatric and neurological problems. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The study was a 30-year follow-up of 198 participants originally diagnosed with language impairments at 3-9 years. Childhood diagnoses were based on language and cognitive abilities, social maturity, motor development, and psychiatric and neurological signs. At follow-up the participants responded to a questionnaire about literacy, education, employment, economic independence and family status. The response rate was 42% (198/470). OUTCOMES & RESULTS: At follow-up a majority of the participants reported literacy difficulties, unemployment and low socio-economic status-at rates significantly higher than in the general population. Participants diagnosed as children with specific language impairments had significantly better outcomes than those with additional diagnoses, even when non-verbal IQ was normal or statistically controlled. Childhood measures accounted for up to 52% of the variance in adult outcomes. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Psychiatric and neurological comorbidity is relevant for adult outcomes of language impairments even when non-verbal IQ is normal.

Predicting reading disabilities using dynamic assessment of decoding before and after the onset of reading instruction: a longitudinal study from kindergarten through grade 2.

The present study examined the predictive validity of a dynamic test of decoding in which participants are taught three novel letters and how to synthesize the corresponding letter sounds into new words. One version of this dynamic test was administered to 158 kindergarten children before the onset of formal reading instruction along with traditional predictors of reading. Similarly, a parallel version of the dynamic test was administered to the same children after a few months of formal reading instruction. At the end of grade 2, the children were assessed on outcome measures of reading and categorized as having disabilities with either accuracy or fluency measures. Administered before as well as after the onset of formal reading instruction, the dynamic test of decoding contributed uniquely to the prediction of difficulties with reading accuracy at the end of grade 2 after control for traditional predictors of reading. Difficulties with reading fluency were also predicted by the dynamic decoding test, but the unique prediction value was more limited. This study showed that a dynamic assessment of decoding can be a useful addition to traditional test batteries for early identification of children at risk for reading disabilities. Even when taken before formal reading instruction, a combination of the dynamic assessment and two traditional measures (letter knowledge and rapid automatized naming) yielded a very high prediction accuracy of reading difficulties at the end of grade 2.

Does a Dynamic Test of Phonological Awareness Predict Early Reading Difficulties?

A few studies have indicated that dynamic measures of phonological awareness may contribute uniquely to the prediction of early reading development. However, standard control measures have been few and limited by floor effects, thus limiting their predictive value. The purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive value of a dynamic test of phonological awareness while controlling for both letter knowledge and standard phonological awareness using measures with no floor effect. We administered a dynamic test of phonological awareness along with traditional tests of phonological awareness and letter knowledge to 160 children in the fall of kindergarten. Reading outcomes were studied at three test points: at the end of kindergarten, in the first half of Grade 1, and at the end of Grade 1. The results indicated that the dynamic test of phonological awareness contributed significantly to the prediction of children's reading development in kindergarten and the first half of Grade 1 after control for static phonological awareness and letter knowledge. However, the unique prediction value of the dynamic test of phonological awareness did not extend to the end of Grade 1.

Phonemic-Morphemic dissociation in university students with dyslexia: an index of reading compensation?

A phonological deficit constitutes a primary cause of developmental dyslexia, which persists into adulthood and can explain some aspects of their reading impairment. Nevertheless, some dyslexic adults successfully manage to study at university level, although very little is currently known about how they achieve this. The present study investigated at both the individual and group levels, whether the development of another oral language skill, namely, morphological knowledge, can be preserved and dissociated from the development of phonological knowledge. Reading, phonological, and morphological abilities were measured in 20 dyslexic and 20 non-dyslexic university students. The results confirmed the persistence of deficits in phonological but not morphological abilities, thereby revealing a dissociation in the development of these two skills. Moreover, the magnitude of the dissociation correlated with reading level. The outcome supports the claim that university students with dyslexia may compensate for phonological weaknesses by drawing on morphological knowledge in reading.

Dyslexia in a second language?-a dynamic test of reading acquisition may provide a fair answer.

Dyslexia is hard to diagnose in a second language. Poor performance on a test of reading may be caused by poor language proficiency in the second language or by limited schooling rather than by poor reading ability per se. This confound was supported in a study of 88 adult second language learners and 65 native language speakers. The incidence of dyslexia in the second language learners varied widely depending on the measure of reading. In order to reduce language and schooling confounds, a dynamic test of acquisition of basic decoding ability was developed. In the dynamic test, participants are taught three novel letters and to synthesise the letter sounds into new words. Results from the study indicated that the dynamic test provided results in accordance with the current IDA definition of dyslexia, while significantly reducing the influence second language vocabulary and amount of schooling. With the dynamic measure, the same cut-off point between dyslexic and non-dyslexic performance appeared valid in both native language speakers and second language learners.

Dyslexia as disability or handicap: when does vocabulary matter?

General cognitive ability is still a factor in current definitions of dyslexia despite two decades of research showing little or no relevance to the nature of dyslexia. This article suggests one reason why this may be so. The suggestion is based on a distinction between dyslexia as a disability (poor ability)-as it is viewed and explained by psycholinguistic and neuropsychological research-and dyslexia seen as a handicap (the consequences of a poor ability) in the educational world. While general knowledge and ability may be irrelevant to the nature of dyslexia as a disability, general knowledge and ability does relate to an ensuing handicap. Vocabulary is possibly the most closely linked subcomponent of "general knowledge and ability" to reading. It was thus hypothesized that when reading ability was controlled individuals with high vocabulary would be more likely than others would to experience a reading handicap as a function of poor reading. Conversely, vocabulary would not relate to the severity of the reading disability per se. These hypotheses were supported by results from a study of 165 adult poor readers.

[Long-term prognosis for developmental language disorder]. / Langtidsprognosen for sprogindlaeringsvanskeligheder.

INTRODUCTION: The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of neurologic and psychiatric comorbidity on the prognosis of developmental language disorder. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A total of 470 pre-school children (4-7 years) with language learning impairment were investigated in the period 1969-1976 at the Institute for Language Impairment in Risskov (SIT) during a 3-6 week observation period. Deaf children were excluded. Questionnaires were sent to the 470 participants in 2006. They were then 36-45 years of age. RESULTS: A total of 200 responses were received. The answer group and the non-responding groups were equal with regard to all parameters investigated in childhood. For 41% a pure hereditary aetiology was present, while 58% had neurological and 51% psychiatric comorbidity. In all, 77% of the children developed reading difficulties during the first school years, while 54% had reading difficulties at the follow-up. 40% started an education after leaving school, while 29% finished their training and acquired work corresponding to their attained level of training. At the follow-up, 35% were self-supporting while 65% received a state pension. Neurological comorbidity was decisive for the prognosis. DISCUSSION: Neurological and psychiatric comorbidity is frequent in children with medium and severe language learning impairment and are decisive for the prognosis. Examination of children suspected of brain dysfunction by a paediatric neurologist and paediatric neuropsychologist is necessary to discover the cognitive deficits which require special habilitating treatment.

Quality of phonological representations, verbal learning, and phoneme awareness in dyslexic and normal readers.

This study of dyslexia was concerned with the quality of phonological representations of lexical items. It extended the studies of verbal learning in dyslexia from learning new vocabulary items (pseudo-names) to the learning of more well-specified variants of known words. The participants were 19 dyslexic adolescents in grades 4 to 6 and 19 younger normal readers in grade 2 matched on single word decoding. The dyslexics were significantly outperformed by the reading-age controls in non-word reading and in phoneme awareness. The dyslexics also took longer time to learn to associate a set of pseudo-names with pictures of persons although the dyslexics learned to associate familiar names with pictures as quickly as the controls did. The acquisition of new phonological representations of words was studied in an imitation task with maximally distinct pronunciations of long, familiar words. The dyslexics gained less than the controls in this task. They also gained less on one measure taken from a phoneme substitution task with the same words as in the distinctness task. The results are interpreted in the light of the hypothesis that poorly specified phonological representations may be an underlying problem in dyslexia.

The ability to learn new word meanings from context by school-age children with and without language comprehension difficulties.

This study investigated young children's ability to use narrative contexts to infer the meanings of novel vocabulary items. Two groups of 15 seven- to eight-year olds participated: children with normally developing reading comprehension skill and children with weak reading comprehension skill. The children read short stories containing a novel word and were required to produce a meaning for the novel word, both before and after its useful defining context. The proximity of the novel word to this context was manipulated. The results supported the hypothesis that children with weak reading comprehension skills are impaired in their ability to integrate information within a text, particularly when that information is non-adjacent and the processing demands are, therefore, high. Analysis of the error data revealed a similar pattern of types of errors for both groups: children with poor reading comprehension were not more likely to produce a thematically inappropriate response than their skilled peers.