The development of children at familial risk for dyslexia: birth to early school age

Three requirements for justifying an educational neuroscience

BACKGROUND

Over the past quarter century, efforts to bridge between research in the neurosciences and research, theory, and practice in education have grown from a mere hope to noteworthy scholarly sophistication. Many dedicated educational researchers have developed the secondary expertise in the necessary neurosciences and related fields to generate both empirical research and theoretical syntheses of noteworthy promise. Nonetheless, thoughtful and critical scholars in education have expressed concern about both the intellectual coherence and ethical dangers of this new area. It is still an open question whether educational neuroscience is for some time yet to remain only a formative study area for adventurous scholars or is already a fully fledged field of educational scholarship.

AIMS

In this paper, I suggest that to be a worthy field of educational research, educational neuroscience will need to address three issues: intellectual coherence, mutually informing and respected scholarly expertise, and an ethical commitment to the moral implications and obligations shared within educational research generally. I shall set forth some examples of lapses in this regard, focusing primarily on work on reading development, as that is my area of expertise, and make recommendations for due diligence. Arguments. First, intellectual coherence requires both precision in definition of technical terms (so that diverse scholars and professionals may communicate findings and insights consistently across fields), and precision in the logical warrants by which educational implications are drawn from empirical data from the neurosciences. Both needs are facilitated by careful attention to categorical boundary and avoidance of category error. Second, educational neuroscientists require focused and broad expertise in both the neurosciences and educational scholarship on teaching and learning in classrooms (and/or ancillary fields). If history is our guide, neuroscience implications for practice will prove unlikely in practice without expertise on practice. Additionally, respect for the expertise of others in this hybrid and necessarily collaborative enterprise is required. Third, educational neuroscience must take seriously the heightened moral and ethical concerns and commitments of educational professionals generally and educational researchers particularly. This means keeping a vigilant eye towards preserving the integrity of empirical and theoretical findings against rhetorical misuse by educational marketers, policy makers, and polemicists targeting the general public.

CONCLUSIONS

I conclude that educational neuroscience is more than a hybrid patchwork of individual interests constituting a study area, and is perhaps ready to stand as a legitimate field of educational inquiry. It will not be accepted as such, however, nor should it be, unless the need to demonstrate a capacity for consistent intellectual coherence, scholarly expertise, and ethical commitment is met.

Academic skills in children with early-onset type 1 diabetes: the effects of diabetes-related risk factors

AIM

The study aimed to assess the effects of diabetes-related risk factors, especially severe hypoglycaemia,on the academic skills of children with early-onset type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM).

METHOD

The study comprised 63 children with T1DM (31 females, 32 males; mean age 9 y 11 mo,SD 4 mo) and 92 comparison children without diabetes (40 females, 52 males;mean age 9 y 9 mo,SD 3 mo). Children were included if T1DM had been diagnosed before the age of 5 years and if they were aged between 9 and 10 years at the time of study. Children were not included if their native language was not Finnish and if they had a diagnosed neurological disorder that affected their cognitive development. Among the T1DM group, 37 had and 26 had not experienced severe hypoglycaemia and 26 had avoided severe hypoglycaemia. Severe hypoglycaemia, diabetic ketoacidosis(DKA), and glycaemic control were used as T1DM-related factors. Task performance in reading, spelling, and mathematics was compared among the three groups, and the effects of the T1DM-related factors were analysed with general linear models.

RESULTS

The groups with (p<0.001) and without (p=0.001) severe hypoglycaemia demonstrated a poorer performance than the comparison group in spelling, and the group without severe hypoglycaemia showed a poorer performance than the comparison group in mathematics (p=0.003).Severe hypoglycaemia, DKA, and recent glycaemic control were not associated with poorer skills,but poorer first-year glycaemic control was associated with poorer spelling (p=0.013).

INTERPRETATION

An early onset of T1DM can increase the risk of learning problems, independently of the history of severe hypoglycaemia or DKA. Poorer glycaemic control after the first year of T1DM is associated with a poorer acquisition of academic skills indicating the effect of the timing of metabolic aberrations on cognitive development.

Early language and behavioral regulation skills as predictors of social outcomes

PURPOSE

In the present study, the authors examined the prospective associations among early language skills, behavioral regulation skills, and 2 aspects of school-age social functioning (adaptability and social skills).

METHOD

The study sample consisted of children with and without a familial risk for dyslexia. The authors analyzed the relations among children's language (at age 2;6 [years;months] and age 5;0), behavioral regulation skills (at age 5;0), and social functioning (at age 8;0) using structural equation modeling. Subgroups of children with respect to language and behavioral regulation skills (at age 5;0) were identified through the use of mixture modeling.

RESULTS

Among at-risk children, behavioral regulation skills mediated the association between early language skills and social outcomes. A subgroup of children with poor regulatory and weak language skills scored lower in adaptability, whereas a subgroup having only poor language skills (with normal behavioral regulation) did not differ from a group with age-appropriate skills.

CONCLUSIONS

The present findings indicate that behavioral regulation skills play an important role in predicting social outcomes among children at risk for language difficulties. Furthermore, it is suggested that various aspects of social functioning may be influenced differently by self-regulation skills and that predictive relationships vary with the degree of language development deficits and accompanying risks.

Parental phonological memory contributes to prediction of outcome of late talkers from 20 months to 4 years: a longitudinal study of precursors of specific language impairment

BACKGROUND

Many children who are late talkers go on to develop normal language, but others go on to have longer-term language difficulties. In this study, we considered which factors were predictive of persistent problems in late talkers.

METHODS

Parental report of expressive vocabulary at 18 months of age was used to select 26 late talkers and 70 average talkers, who were assessed for language and cognitive ability at 20 months of age. Follow-up at 4 years of age was carried out for 24 late and 58 average talkers. A psychometric test battery was used to categorize children in terms of language status (unimpaired or impaired) and nonverbal ability (normal range or more than 1 SD below average). The vocabulary and non-word repetition skills of the accompanying parent were also assessed.

RESULTS

Among the late talkers, seven (29%) met our criteria for specific language impairment (SLI) at 4 years of age, and a further two (8%) had low nonverbal ability. In the group of average talkers, eight (14%) met the criteria for SLI at 4 years, and five other children (8%) had low nonverbal ability. Family history of language problems was slightly better than late-talker status as a predictor of SLI.. The best predictors of SLI at 20 months of age were score on the receptive language scale of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning and the parent's performance on a non-word repetition task. Maternal education was not a significant predictor of outcome.

CONCLUSIONS

In this study, around three-quarters of late talkers did not have any language difficulties at 4 years of age, provided there was no family history of language impairment. A family history of language-literacy problems was found to be a significant predictor for persisting problems. Nevertheless, there are children with SLI for whom prediction is difficult because they did not have early language delay.

How Many Letters Should Preschoolers in Public Programs Know? The Diagnostic Efficiency of Various Preschool Letter-Naming Benchmarks for Predicting First-Grade Literacy Achievement

Review of current federal and state standards indicates little consensus or empirical justification regarding appropriate goals, often referred to as benchmarks, for preschool letter-name learning. The present study investigated the diagnostic efficiency of various letter-naming benchmarks using a longitudinal database of 371 children who attended publicly funded preschools. Children's uppercase and lowercase letter-naming abilities were assessed at the end of preschool, and their literacy achievement on 3 standardized measures was assessed at the end of 1st grade. Diagnostic indices (sensitivity, specificity, and negative and positive predictive power) were generated to examine the extent to which attainment of various preschool letter-naming benchmarks was associated with later risk for literacy difficulties. Results indicated generally high negative predictive power for benchmarks requiring children to know 10 or more letter names by the end of preschool. Balancing across all diagnostic indices, optimal benchmarks of 18 uppercase and 15 lowercase letter names were identified. These findings are discussed in terms of educational implications, limitations, and future directions.

The mismatch negativity (MMN)--a unique window to disturbed central auditory processing in ageing and different clinical conditions

In this article, we review clinical research using the mismatch negativity (MMN), a change-detection response of the brain elicited even in the absence of attention or behavioural task. In these studies, the MMN was usually elicited by employing occasional frequency, duration or speech-sound changes in repetitive background stimulation while the patient was reading or watching videos. It was found that in a large number of different neuropsychiatric, neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, as well as in normal ageing, the MMN amplitude was attenuated and peak latency prolonged. Besides indexing decreased discrimination accuracy, these effects may also reflect, depending on the specific stimulus paradigm used, decreased sensory-memory duration, abnormal perception or attention control or, most importantly, cognitive decline. In fact, MMN deficiency appears to index cognitive decline irrespective of the specific symptomatologies and aetiologies of the different disorders involved.

Task avoidance, number skills and parental learning difficulties as predictors of poor response to instruction

Altogether 1,285 Finnish children were followed up from the end of kindergarten through Grade 1. All were nonreaders at school entrance. The aim was to delineate predictors of resistance to treatment that are evidenced as little or no reading progress during Grade 1. On the basis of reading achievement in Grade 1 spring, four subgroups were formed. These were fast, average, and slow reading acquisition and slow progress in both reading and math. Kindergarten spring scores in phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid naming, and number skills differentiated well among the groups, the latter two being more robust predictors. Task avoidance added to the prediction over and above cognitive skills. Its effect disappeared when parental history of reading and math difficulties was included in the equation. The present results depict poor response to instruction as a general learning problem rather than a specific reading difficulty. Poor response to instruction differs from dyslexia also in that treatment resisters start school with cognitive prerequisites that do not indicate severe reading and math problems.

Predicting dyslexia at age 11 from a risk index questionnaire at age 5

This study focused on predicting dyslexia in children ahead of formal literacy training. Because dyslexia is a constitutional impairment, risk factors should be seen in preschool. It was hypothesized that data gathered at age 5 using questions targeting the dyslexia endophenotype should be reliable and valid predictors of dyslexia at age 11. A questionnaire was given to caretakers of 120 5-year-old children, and a risk index score was calculated based on questions regarding health, laterality, motor skills, language, special needs education and heredity. An at-risk group (n = 25) and matched controls (n = 24) were followed until age 11, when a similar questionnaire and literacy tests were administered to the children who participated in the follow-up study (22 at risk and 20 control). Half of the at-risk children and two of the control children at age 5 were identified as having dyslexia at age 11 (8 girls and 5 boys). It is concluded that it is possible to identify children at the age of 5 who will have dyslexia at the age of 11 through a questionnaire approach.

WITHDRAWN: Print-specific multimodal brain activation in kindergarten improves prediction of reading skills in second grade

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Do children with dyslexia and/or specific language impairment compensate for place assimilation? Insight into phonological grammar and representations

English speakers have to recognize, for example, that te[m] in te[m] pens is a form of ten, despite place assimilation of the nasal consonant. Children with dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) are commonly proposed to have a phonological deficit, and we investigate whether that deficit extends to place assimilation, as a way of probing phonological representations and phonological grammar. Children with SLI plus dyslexia, SLI only, and dyslexia only listened to sentences containing a target word in different assimilatory contexts-viable, unviable, and no change-and pressed a button to report hearing the target. The dyslexia-only group did not differ from age-matched controls, but the SLI groups showed more limited ability to accurately identify words within sentences. Once this factor was taken into account, the groups did not differ in their ability to compensate for assimilation. The results add to a growing body of evidence that phonological representations are not necessarily impaired in dyslexia. SLI children's results suggest that they too are sensitive to this aspect of phonological grammar, but are more liberal in their acceptance of alternative phonological forms of words. Furthermore, these children's ability to reject alternative phonological forms seems to be primarily limited by their vocabulary size and phonological awareness abilities.

Auditory event-related potentials show altered hemispheric responses in dyslexia

Dyslexia is characterized by deficits in phonological processing abilities. However, it is unclear what the underlying factors for poor phonological abilities or speech sound representations are. One hypothesis suggests that individuals with dyslexia have problems in basic acoustic perception which in turn can also cause problems in speech perception. Here basic auditory processing was assessed by auditory event-related potentials recorded for paired tones presented in an oddball paradigm in 9-year-old children with dyslexia and a familial background of dyslexia, typically reading children at familial risk for dyslexia and control children without risk for dyslexia. The tone pairs elicited a P1-N250 complex with emerging N1-P2 complex. Control children showed larger responses over the left-than-right hemisphere at the P1 and P2 time windows for both short and long within-pair intervals (WPI; 10 and 255ms) whereas children with dyslexia showed this pattern only for the tone pairs with the long WPI. The response for the pairs with the short WPI showed equal amplitudes over both hemispheres in children with dyslexia. The findings indicate that individuals with dyslexia process basic auditory information differently when the tones are within the temporal window of integration.

Computer-assisted remedial reading intervention for school beginners at risk for reading disability

The aim of the longitudinal study was to investigate whether a computer application designed for remedial reading training can enhance letter knowledge, reading accuracy, fluency, and spelling of at-risk children. The participants, 7-year-old Finnish school beginners (N=166), were assigned to 1 of 3 groups: (a) regular remedial reading intervention (n=25), (b) computer-assessed reading intervention (n=25), and (c) mainstream reading instruction (n=116). Based on the results, computer-assisted remedial reading intervention was highly beneficial, whereas regular type of intervention was less successful. The results indicated that at-risk children require computer-based letter-name and letter-sound training to acquire adequate decoding and spelling skills, and to reach the level of their non-at-risk peers.

Effects of bottom-up and top-down intervention principles in emergent literacy in children at risk of developmental dyslexia: a longitudinal study

This longitudinal study focused on the effects of two different principles of intervention in children at risk of developing dyslexia from 5 to 8 years old. The children were selected on the basis of a background questionnaire given to parents and preschool teachers, with cognitive and functional magnetic resonance imaging results substantiating group differences in neuropsychological processes associated with phonology, orthography, and phoneme-grapheme correspondence (i.e., alphabetic principle). The two principles of intervention were bottom-up (BU), "from sound to meaning", and top-down (TD), "from meaning to sound." Thus, four subgroups were established: risk/BU, risk/TD, control/BU, and control/TD. Computer-based training took place for 2 months every spring, and cognitive assessments were performed each fall of the project period. Measures of preliteracy skills for reading and spelling were phonological awareness, working memory, verbal learning, and letter knowledge. Literacy skills were assessed by word reading and spelling. At project end the control group scored significantly above age norm, whereas the risk group scored within the norm. In the at-risk group, training based on the BU principle had the strongest effects on phonological awareness and working memory scores, whereas training based on the TD principle had the strongest effects on verbal learning, letter knowledge, and literacy scores. It was concluded that appropriate, specific, data-based intervention starting in preschool can mitigate literacy impairment and that interventions should contain BU training for preliteracy skills and TD training for literacy training.

Early and late talkers: school-age language, literacy and neurolinguistic differences

Early language development sets the stage for a lifetime of competence in language and literacy. However, the neural mechanisms associated with the relative advantages of early communication success, or the disadvantages of having delayed language development, are not well explored. In this study, 174 elementary school-age children whose parents reported that they started forming sentences 'early', 'on-time' or 'late' were evaluated with standardized measures of language, reading and spelling. All oral and written language measures revealed consistent patterns for 'early' talkers to have the highest level of performance and 'late' talkers to have the lowest level of performance. We report functional magnetic resonance imaging data from a subset of early, on-time and late talkers matched for age, gender and performance intelligence quotient that allows evaluation of neural activation patterns produced while listening to and reading real words and pronounceable non-words. Activation in bilateral thalamus and putamen, and left insula and superior temporal gyrus during these tasks was significantly lower in late talkers, demonstrating that residual effects of being a late talker are found not only in behavioural tests of oral and written language, but also in distributed cortical-subcortical neural circuits underlying speech and print processing. Moreover, these findings suggest that the age of functional language acquisition can have long-reaching effects on reading and language behaviour, and on the corresponding neurocircuitry that supports linguistic function into the school-age years.

Inter-relationships among behavioral markers, genes, brain and treatment in dyslexia and dysgraphia

Cross-country, longitudinal twin studies provide strong evidence for both the biological and environmental basis of dyslexia, and the stability of genetic influences on reading and spelling, even when skills improve in response to instruction. Although DNA studies aimed at identifying gene candidates in dyslexia and related phenotypes (behavioral expression of underlying genotypes); and imaging studies of brain differences between individuals with and without dyslexia and the brain's response to instructional treatment are increasing, this review illustrates, with the findings of one multidisciplinary research center, an emerging trend to investigate the inter-relationships among genetic, brain and instructional treatment findings in the same sample, which are interpreted in reference to a working-memory architecture, for dyslexia (impaired decoding and spelling) and/or dysgraphia (impaired handwriting). General principles for diagnosis and treatment, based on research with children who failed to respond to the regular instructional program, are summarized for children meeting research criteria for having or being at risk for dyslexia or dysgraphia. Research documenting earlier emerging specific oral language impairment during preschool years associated with reading and writing disabilities during school years is also reviewed. Recent seminal advances and projected future trends are discussed for linking brain endophenotypes and gene candidates, identifying transchromosomal interactions, and exploring epigenetics (chemic al modifications of gene expression in response to developmental or environmental changes). Rather than providing final answers, this review highlights past, current and emerging issues in dyslexia research and practice.

Verbal and academic skills in children with early-onset type 1 diabetes

AIM

Basic verbal and academic skills can be adversely affected by early-onset diabetes, although these skills have been studied less than other cognitive functions. This study aimed to explore the mechanism of learning deficits in children with diabetes by assessing basic verbal and academic skills in children with early-onset diabetes and in comparison children. In addition, the incidence of dyslexia (< or =10th centile in reading speed or reading-spelling accuracy) was studied.

METHOD

The performance of 51 children with early-onset diabetes (25 females, 26 males; mean age 9y 11mo, SD 4mo; range 9-10y) was compared with that of 92 children without diabetes (40 females, 52 males; mean age 9y 10mo, SD 3mo; range 9-10y) in the tasks of phonological processing, short-term memory, rapid automatized naming, reading, spelling, and mathematics.

RESULTS

The performance of children with diabetes was poorer than that of the comparison children in phonological processing (p=0.001), spelling accuracy (p<0.001), and mathematics (p=0.024). They learned to read later (p=0.013), but reading performance and the incidence of dyslexia in the third grade (aged 9-10y) were similar in the two groups.

INTERPRETATION

Children with early-onset diabetes are prone to minor learning difficulties in their early school years as a result of deficits in phonological processing.

Language development, literacy skills, and predictive connections to reading in Finnish children with and without familial risk for dyslexia

Discriminative language markers and predictive links between early language and literacy skills were investigated retrospectively in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia in which children at familial risk for dyslexia have been followed from birth. Three groups were formed on the basis of 198 children's reading and spelling status. One group of children with reading disability (RD; n = 46) and two groups of typical readers from nondyslexic control (TRC; n = 84) and dyslexic families (TRD; n = 68) were examined from age 1.5 years to school age. The RD group was outperformed by typical readers on numerous language and literacy measures (expressive and receptive language, morphology, phonological sensitivity, RAN, and letter knowledge) from 2 years of age onward. The strongest predictive links emerged from receptive and expressive language to reading via measures of letter naming, rapid naming, morphology, and phonological awareness.

Perception of phonemic length and its relation to reading and spelling skills in children with family risk for dyslexia in the first three grades of school

PURPOSE

To examine the ability to discriminate phonemic length and the association of this ability with reading accuracy, reading speed, and spelling accuracy in Finnish children throughout Grades 1-3.

METHOD

Reading-disabled (RDFR, n = 35) and typically reading children (TRFR, n = 69) with family risk for dyslexia and typically reading control children (TRC, n = 80) were tested once in each grade of Grades 1-3 using a phonemic length discrimination task. Reading, spelling, IQ, verbal short-term memory, phonological memory, and naming speed were assessed.

RESULTS

The RDFR group made more errors in phonemic length discrimination than the TRC group in Grades 2 and 3. After taking into account variance in verbal short-term memory, phonological memory, and naming speed, discrimination ability explained unique variance of spelling accuracy in Grades 2 and 3 and reading accuracy in Grade 3 in the RDFR group. At the individual level, in Grade 2, 31.4% of the RDFR group and 14.7% of the TRFR group performed below -1.25 SDs in the phonemic length discrimination task.

CONCLUSION

Problems in phonemic length discrimination could be one of the accumulating risk factors affecting development leading to dyslexia.

Vorhersage früher Schriftsprachleistungen aus vorschulischen Kompetenzen der Sprache und der phonologischen Informationsverarbeitung

Zusammenfassung. Im deutschen Sprachraum werden seit vielen Jahren Kompetenzen im Bereich der phonologischen Informationsverarbeitung im Zusammenhang mit dem Schriftspracherwerb untersucht. Als stärkster Prädiktor von frühen Lese- und Rechtschreibkompetenzen gilt die vorschulische phonologische Bewusstheit. Studien aus dem angloamerikanischen und skandinavischen Sprachraum deuten jedoch darauf hin, dass auch breitere sprachliche Kompetenzen (Wortschatz, Grammatik) den Erwerb der Schriftsprache vorhersagen. An der vorliegenden Längsschnittstudie nahmen 53 Kinder teil, die im Alter von 5 Jahren hinsichtlich ihrer Kompetenzen im Bereich der Sprache und der phonologischen Informationsverarbeitung sowie im Alter von 8 Jahren hinsichtlich ihrer Lese-Rechtschreibleistungen untersucht wurden. Als stärkster Prädiktor der frühen Lese- und Rechtschreibkompetenz konnte dabei die vorschulische Satzgedächtnisleistung identifiziert werden. Diese wiederum lässt sich durch die Größe des Wortschatzes und die Kapazität des phonologischen Arbeitsgedächtnisses erklären. Mit dem Nachsprechen von Sätzen liegt damit ein ökonomisches Maß vor, mit dem bereits im Vorschulalter Schriftsprachleistungen vorhergesagt werden können.

Neurophysiology in preschool improves behavioral prediction of reading ability throughout primary school

BACKGROUND

More struggling readers could profit from additional help at the beginning of reading acquisition if dyslexia prediction were more successful. Currently, prediction is based only on behavioral assessment of early phonological processing deficits associated with dyslexia, but it might be improved by adding brain-based measures.

METHODS

In a 5-year longitudinal study of children with (n = 21) and without (n = 23) familial risk for dyslexia, we tested whether neurophysiological measures of automatic phoneme and tone deviance processing obtained in kindergarten would improve prediction of reading over behavioral measures alone.

RESULTS

Together, neurophysiological and behavioral measures obtained in kindergarten significantly predicted reading in school. Particularly the late mismatch negativity measure that indicated hemispheric lateralization of automatic phoneme processing improved prediction of reading ability over behavioral measures. It was also the only significant predictor for long-term reading success in fifth grade. Importantly, this result also held for the subgroup of children at familial risk.

CONCLUSIONS

The results demonstrate that brain-based measures of processing deficits associated with dyslexia improve prediction of reading and thus may be further evaluated to complement clinical practice of dyslexia prediction, especially in targeted populations, such as children with a familial risk.

Reading and subcortical auditory function

Although it is largely agreed that phonological processing deficits are a major cause of poor reading, the neural origins of phonological processing are not well understood. We now show, for the first time, that phonological decoding, measured with a test of single-nonword reading, is significantly correlated with the timing of subcortical auditory processing and also, to a lesser extent, with the robustness of subcortical representation of the harmonic content of speech, but not with pitch encoding. The relationships we observe between reading and subcortical processing fall along a continuum, with poor readers at one end and good readers at the other. These data suggest that reading skill may depend on the integrity of subcortical auditory mechanisms and are consistent with the idea that subcortical representation of the acoustic features of speech may play a role in normal reading as well as in the development of reading disorders. These data establish a significant link between subcortical auditory function and reading, thereby contributing to the understanding of the biological bases of reading. At a more general level, these findings are among the first to establish a direct relationship between subcortical sensory function and a specific cognitive skill (reading). We argue that this relationship between cortical and subcortical function could be shaped during development by the corticofugal pathway and that this cortical-subcortical link could contribute to the phonological processing deficits experienced by poor readers.

Developmental links of very early phonological and language skills to second grade reading outcomes: strong to accuracy but only minor to fluency

The authors examined second grade reading accuracy and fluency and their associations via letter knowledge to phonological and language predictors assessed at 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years in children in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. Structural equation modeling showed that a developmentally highly stable factor (early phonological and language processing [EPLP]) behind key dyslexia predictors (i.e., phonological awareness, short-term memory, rapid naming, vocabulary, and pseudoword repetition) could already be identified at 3.5 years. EPLP was significantly associated with reading and spelling accuracy and by age with letter knowledge. However, EPLP had only a minor link with reading fluency, which was additionally explained by early letter knowledge. The results show that reading accuracy is well predicted by early phonological and language skills. Variation in fluent reading skills is not well explained by early skills, suggesting factors other than phonological core skills. Future research is suggested to explore the factors behind the development of fast and accurate decoding skills.

N1 and P2 components of auditory event-related potentials in children with and without reading disabilities

OBJECTIVE

The effects of within stimulus presentation rate and rise time on basic auditory processing were investigated in children with reading disabilities and typically reading children.

METHODS

Children with reading disabilities (RD; N=19) and control children (N=20) were studied using event-related potentials (ERPs). Paired stimuli were used with two different within-pair-intervals (WPI; 10 and 255 ms) and two different rise times (10 and 130 ms). Each stimulus was presented with equal probability and long between-pair inter-stimulus intervals (1-5s). The study focused on N1 and P2 components.

RESULTS

The P2 responses to the first tone in the pair showed differences between children with RD and control children. Also, children with RD had larger N1 response than control children to stimuli with short WPI and long rise time.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide evidence for basic auditory processing abnormalities in children with RD. This processing difference could be related to extraction of stimulus features from sounds or to attentional mechanisms.

SIGNIFICANCE

Our results show support for behavioral findings that children with RD and control children process rise times differently. More than half of children with RD showed atypical auditory processing.

Development of neural systems for reading

Functional and structural neuroimaging studies of adult readers have provided a deeper understanding of the neural basis of reading, yet such findings also elicit new questions about how developing neural systems come to support this learned ability. A developmental cognitive neuroscience approach provides insights into how skilled reading emerges in the developing brain, yet also raises new methodological challenges. This review focuses on functional changes that occur during reading acquisition in cortical regions associated with both the perception of visual words and spoken language, and it examines how such functional changes differ within developmental reading disabilities. We integrate these findings within an interactive specialization framework of functional development and propose that such a framework may provide insights into how individual differences at several levels of observation (genetics, white matter tract structure, functional organization of language, cultural organization of writing systems) impact the emergence of neural systems involved in reading ability and disability.

Very early phonological and language skills: estimating individual risk of reading disability

BACKGROUND

Analyses from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia project show that the key childhood predictors (phonological awareness, short-term memory, rapid naming, expressive vocabulary, pseudoword repetition, and letter naming) of dyslexia differentiate the group with reading disability (n = 46) and the group without reading problems (n = 152) at the end of the 2nd grade. These measures were employed at the ages of 3.5, 4.5 and 5.5 years and information regarding the familial risk of dyslexia was used to find the most sensitive indices of an individual child's risk for reading disability.

METHODS

Age-specific and across-age logistic regression models were constructed to produce the risk indices. The predictive ability of the risk indices was explored using the ROC (receiver operating curve) plot. Information from the logistic models was further utilised in illustrating the risk with probability curve presentations.

RESULTS

The logistic regression models with familial risk,letter knowledge, phonological awareness and RAN provided a prediction probability above .80 (area under ROC).

CONCLUSIONS

The models including familial risk status and the three above-mentioned measures offer a rough screening procedure for estimating an individual child's risk for reading disability at the age of 3.5 years. Probability curves are presented as a method of illustrating the risk.

Phonological processing and reading in children with speech sound disorders

PURPOSE

To examine the relationship between phonological processing skills prior to kindergarten entry and reading skills at the end of 1st grade, in children with speech sound disorders (SSD).

METHOD

The participants were 17 children with SSD and poor phonological processing skills (SSD-low PP), 16 children with SSD and good phonological processing skills (SSD-high PP), and 35 children with typical speech who were first assessed during their prekindergarten year using measures of phonological processing (i.e., speech perception, rime awareness, and onset awareness tests), speech production, receptive and expressive language, and phonological awareness skills. This assessment was repeated when the children were completing 1st grade. The Test of Word Reading Efficiency was also conducted at that time. First-grade sight word and nonword reading performance was compared across these groups.

RESULTS

At the end of 1st grade, the SSD-low PP group achieved significantly lower nonword decoding scores than the SSD-high PP and typical speech groups. The 2 SSD groups demonstrated similarly good receptive language skills and similarly poor articulation skills at that time, however. No between-group differences in sight word reading were observed. All but 1 child (in the SSD-low PP group) obtained reading scores that were within normal limits.

CONCLUSION

Weaknesses in phonological processing were stable for the SSD-low PP subgroup over a 2-year period.

Reading development subtypes and their early characteristics

The present findings are drawn from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD), in which approximately 100 children with familial risk of dyslexia and 100 control children have been followed from birth. In this paper we report data on the reading development of the JLD children and their classmates, a total of 1,750 children from four measurement points during the first two school years. In the total sample, we examined whether heterogeneous developmental paths can be identified based on profiles of word recognition and reading comprehension. Secondly, we studied what kind of early language and literacy skill profiles and reading experiences characterize the children with differing reading development in the follow-up sample. The mixture modeling procedure resulted in five subtypes: (1) poor readers, (2) slow decoders, (3) poor comprehenders, (4) average readers, and (5) good readers. The children with familial risk for dyslexia performed on average at a lower level in all reading tasks than both their classmates and the controls, and they were overrepresented in slow decoders subtype. Differences between the subtypes were found in the early language and literacy skill development, as well as in the reading experiences of the reading subtypes.

The Role of Early Auditory Discrimination Deficits in Language Disorders

Language impairments can have a devastating effect on the individual’s life. Brain damage such as stroke may cause varying degrees of impaired language. Even milder language problems, such as developmental dyslexia or specific language impairment, can have long-lasting detrimental effects on the individual’s life, affecting both success at school as well as motivation and even self-esteem. In recent years, the mismatch negativity (MMN) has been intensively applied to study the neural basis of language impairments. These studies have shown that the MMN, which reflects the early stages of cortical sound discrimination, is abnormal in a large variety of language impairments. Furthermore, a close relationship between the MMN and some language disorders is suggested by significant correlations between the MMN and language test results. Further support is provided by follow-up studies suggesting that the MMN parameters may predict future language problems in children and by investigations indicating that intervention programs with an ameliorating effect also concurrently change the MMN. However, when interpreting the implications of MMN results it is important to acknowledge that this response specifically reflects early stages of auditory discrimination and should, therefore, be combined with measures probing the further steps of auditory processing for a more complete picture of the underlying deficits of language. The current review addresses how the MMN can be used in determining auditory impairments in language disorders such as aphasia, dyslexia, autism spectrum, and specific language impairment.

Kindergarten risk factors, cognitive factors, and teacher judgments as predictors of early reading in Dutch

This study focused on the predictive value of risk factors, cognitive factors, and teachers' judgments in a sample of 462 kindergartners for their early reading skills and reading failure at the beginning of Grade 1. With respect to risk factors, enrollment in speech-language therapy, history of dyslexia or speech-language problems in the family, and the role of gender were considered. None of these risk factors were significantly related to reading performance. Cognitive factors in this study included letter knowledge, rapid naming ability, and nonword repetition skills. Of these skills, letter knowledge seemed to have the highest correlation with reading. Kindergarten teachers' judgments, including a task assignment scale and teachers' predictions, demonstrated a significant relationship with reading. Finally, to judge whether these predictors could identify reading disabilities, the discriminatory power of all predictors was assessed and appeared to be insufficient. Implications for screening purposes are discussed.

Dynamic auditory processing, musical experience and language development

Children with language-learning impairments (LLI) form a heterogeneous population with the majority having both spoken and written language deficits as well as sensorimotor deficits, specifically those related to dynamic processing. Research has focused on whether or not sensorimotor deficits, specifically auditory spectrotemporal processing deficits, cause phonological deficit, leading to language and reading impairments. New trends aimed at resolving this question include prospective longitudinal studies of genetically at-risk infants, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies, and studies aimed at evaluating the effects of auditory training (including musical training) on brain organization for language. Better understanding of the origins of developmental LLI will advance our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying individual differences in language development and lead to more effective educational and intervention strategies. This review is part of the INMED/TINS special issue "Nature and nurture in brain development and neurological disorders", based on presentations at the annual INMED/TINS symposium (http://inmednet.com/).

Alphabetic Skills in Preschool: A Preliminary Study of Letter Naming and Letter Writing

Development of letter naming and writing (skills in writing first name, dictated and copied letters, and dictated and copied numbers) was examined in 79 preschool children (M age = 56 months). Skills were assessed in the fall to determine the status of these procedural skills that are components of alphabetic knowledge at the start of the school year. Children with high letter-naming scores also had high scores on letter writing, including dictated or copied letters and writing some or all of the letters of their names. Letter-naming skills were related to number-writing skills whether the numbers were dictated or copied. The highest writing scores were found for first name writing compared to writing or copying letters and numbers. A focus on the development of procedural knowledge in the preschool period may yield the hopep for impacts on later reading skills that has not been found in curricula emphasizing conceptual knowledge (e.g., knowledge of print concepts, book conventions).

Language development and literacy skills in late-talking toddlers with and without familial risk for dyslexia

The relationship between late-talkers' language development and reading and spelling outcomes was examined in children with and without familial risk for dyslexia. The late-talking subgroups were defined using parent- and test-based assessments of receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar at 2 and 2.5 years as intake criteria. The language skills of late talkers and the remainders of these two groups were assessed at 3.5, 5, and 5.5 years. Reading/spelling outcomes were compared at the end of the second grade. Late-talking toddlers of the at-risk group who had both poor receptive and expressive skills performed less well than all other groups on language measurements at 5.5 years. In contrast, the control group's late talkers with an expressive delay reached the language level of their age-mates already by 3.5 years, and maintained their age-appropriate position two years later. The most significant differences in the reading skills were found between the at-risk children with receptive and expressive delay and the remainder of the controls. Age-appropriate early language skills did not, however, ensure norm-level fluent reading in the at-risk group. The remainder of the at-risk group performed at a significantly lower level than did the remainder of the controls, both on the oral reading and spelling tasks.

Emerging phonological awareness differentiates children with and without familial risk for dyslexia after controlling for general language skills

Emerging phonological awareness was compared in two groups of 3.5-year-old children belonging to the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD): children with familial risk of dyslexia (at-risk group n = 98) and children without such risk (control group n = 91). Four computer animated tasks were used: Word-level and Syllable-level Segment Identification, Synthesis, and Continuation of Phonological Units. The control group children manifested higher mastery than children in the at-risk group in phonological awareness, and the proportion of children with a low phonological awareness mean score was 2.5 times higher in the at-risk group than in the control group. In both groups, phonological awareness at 3.5 years was predicted by early language skills assessed between 14 and 26 months of age, and it was also associated with concurrent language. The difference between the at-risk and control group at 3.5-year in phonological awareness remained significant, even when the effect of other language skills such as productive and receptive vocabulary, and mastery of inflections, measured both at earlier ages and concurrently were controlled for. Our findings indicate that familial risk for dyslexia is reliably reflected in emerging phonological awareness already at this early age and it can be assessed independently of other language skills.