Perceived negative consequences of dyslexia: the influence of person and environmental factors

Perceived negative consequences of dyslexia entail the degree to which an individual perceives negative outcomes, such as low academic achievement or feelings of anxiety and depression, and attributes these experiences to the disorder. In the current study, we examined how perceived consequences of dyslexia are influenced by person and environmental factors. Perceived consequences were evaluated for the academic domain and the domain of mental health (depression, anxiety). Participants were 123 Dutch students with dyslexia. Cognitive person factors (literacy skills and verbal IQ), socio-emotional person factors (self-perceived literacy skills and coping ability), and environmental factors (literacy demands, support from the institution, reactions of teachers and peers) were included as predictors. Results indicated that perceived negative consequences were not related to cognitive person factors. In contrast, better self-perceived literacy skills were associated with less perceived negative consequences in all domains (academic, depression, anxiety) and coping contributed to depression consequences. With respect to environmental factors, negative reactions in the academic environment contributed to perceived negative consequences of depression and anxiety. As such, findings indicate that individuals with dyslexia perceive negative consequences in the academic, anxiety, and depression domains which cannot be fully accounted for by their objective reading and writing problems. These factors should feature more prominently in future studies on dyslexia and should be addressed in treatment of dyslexia as well.

A stitch in time…: Comparing late-identified, late-emerging and early-identified dyslexia

When dyslexia is diagnosed late, the question is whether this is due to late-emerging (LE) or late-identified (LI) problems. In a random selection of dyslexia-diagnosis case files we distinguished early-diagnosed (Grade 1-3, n = 116) and late-diagnosed (Grade 4-6) dyslexia. The late-diagnosed files were divided into LE (n = 54) and LI dyslexia (n = 45). The LE group consisted of children whose national-curriculum literacy outcomes did not warrant referral for dyslexia diagnosis in Grades 1-2; the LI group of children whose literacy outcomes did, but who were referred for diagnostic assessment after Grade 3. At the time of diagnosis, the percentage of poor performers on word-level literacy measures generally did not differ between the groups. Only the LE group contained fewer poor performers than the early-diagnosed and LI group on some word-reading measures. All groups showed similar distributions of phonological difficulties. There were no indications of compensation through vocabulary, memory or IQ in either late-diagnosed group. Our diagnosis-based study confirms and extends previous research-based studies on LE dyslexia. Moreover, it shows that LI dyslexia exists, which can be regarded as the existence of instructional casualties. The findings speak to issues of identification, diagnosis and compensation and call for further efforts to improve the early identification of dyslexia.

Early and late diagnosed dyslexia in secondary school: Performance on literacy skills and cognitive correlates

Although a diagnosis of dyslexia is often made during elementary school, severe and persistent literacy difficulties of a considerable group of students are only noticed during secondary school. The question arises whether the literacy(-related) deficits of these late identified students with dyslexia differ from those of early diagnosed students. To address this question, 10th Grade Dutch secondary school students with early (n = 35) and late (n = 19) identified dyslexia and their peers with average to good literacy abilities (n = 24) were compared on literacy skills and underlying cognitive skills. At the group level, both students with an early and late diagnosis performed more poorly than their typical peers, but they did not differ from each other on (pseudo-)word reading, spelling and underlying cognitive correlates (phonemic awareness, rapid automatized naming and visual attention span). The early and late group contained comparable percentages of students performing poorly on most measures. There were, however, more students in the early group who showed deficits in phonemic awareness. Our results indicate that students with early and late diagnosed dyslexia are highly comparable. Suggestions for fitting interventions are discussed.

Simulation of dyslexia. How literacy and cognitive skills can help distinguish college students with dyslexia from malingerers

Academic accommodations associated with a diagnosis of dyslexia might be incentives for college students without reading or spelling difficulties to feign dyslexia and obtain the diagnosis unfairly. In the current study we examined malingering practices by comparing the performance of college students instructed to malinger dyslexia (n = 28) to that of students actually diagnosed with dyslexia (n = 16). We also included a control group of students without reading and spelling difficulties (n = 28). The test battery included tasks tapping literacy skills as well as underlying cognitive skills associated with literacy outcomes. These tasks are commonly used in diagnosing dyslexia. We examined patterns in the performance of malingerers across tasks and tested whether malingerers could be identified based on their performance on a limited number of tasks. Results indicated that malingerers scored significantly lower than students with dyslexia on reading and spelling skills; i.e., the core characteristics of dyslexia. Especially reading performance was extremely low and not in line with students’ age and level of education. Findings for underlying cognitive skills were mixed. Overall, malingerers scored lower than students with dyslexia on tasks tapping mainly speed, whereas the two groups did not differ on tasks reflecting mainly accuracy. Based on word and pseudoword reading and letter and digit naming, the three groups could be distinguished with reasonable sensitivity and specificity. In all, results indicate that college students seem to understand on which tasks they should feign dyslexia, but tend to exaggerate difficulties on these tasks to the point where diagnosticians should mistrust performance.

Pathways Into Literacy: The Role of Early Oral Language Abilities and Family Risk for Dyslexia

The present study investigated the role of early oral language and family risk for dyslexia in the two developmental pathways toward reading comprehension, through word reading and through oral language abilities. The sample contained 237 children (164 at family risk for dyslexia) from the Dutch Dyslexia Program. Longitudinal data were obtained on seven occasions when children were between 4 and 12 years old. The relationship between early oral language ability and reading comprehension at the age of 12 years was mediated by preliteracy skills and word-decoding ability for the first pathway and by later language abilities for the second pathway. Family risk influenced literacy development through its subsequent relations with preliteracy skills, word decoding, and reading comprehension. Although performance on language measures was often lower for the family-risk group than for the no-family-risk group, family risk did not have a specific relation with either early or later oral language abilities.

Delayed Early Vocabulary Development in Children at Family Risk of Dyslexia

PURPOSE

This study aimed to gain more insight into the relation between vocabulary and reading acquisition by examining early growth trajectories in the vocabulary of children at family risk (FR) of dyslexia longitudinally.

METHOD

The sample included 212 children from the Dutch Dyslexia Program with and without an FR. Parents reported on their children's receptive and expressive vocabulary size at ages 17, 23, 29, and 35 months using the Dutch MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. Dyslexia status at the end of Grade 2 (8 years) rendered 3 groups: FR-dyslexic (n = 51), FR-nondyslexic (n = 92), and typically developing-nondyslexic (TD) children (n = 69).

RESULTS

Repeated measures analyses showed that FR-dyslexic children had lower receptive vocabulary scores from 23 months onward and lower expressive scores from 17 months onward than FR-nondyslexic children. Latent growth curve modeling showed lower initial growth rates in FR-dyslexic children, followed by partial recovery, indicating a delayed increase in receptive and expressive vocabulary. FR-nondyslexic and TD children did not differ.

CONCLUSIONS

Early deficits in receptive and expressive vocabulary are associated with later reading. Early vocabulary growth of FR-dyslexic children is characterized by a delay but not deviance of growth. Vocabulary can be considered an additional risk factor for dyslexia.

Foreign language reading and spelling in gifted students with dyslexia in secondary education

A few studies suggest that gifted children with dyslexia have better literacy skills than averagely intelligent children with dyslexia. This finding aligns with the hypothesis that giftedness-related factors provide compensation for poor reading. The present study investigated whether, as in the native language (NL), the level of foreign language (FL) literacy of gifted students with dyslexia is higher than the literacy level of averagely intelligent students with dyslexia and whether this difference can be accounted for by the difference in their NL literacy level. The sample consisted of 148 Dutch native speaking secondary school students divided in four groups: dyslexia, gifted/dyslexia, typically developing (TD), and gifted. All students were assessed on word reading and orthographic knowledge in Dutch and English when they were in 7th or 8th grade. A subsample (n = 71) was (re)assessed on Dutch, English, French, and German literacy one year later. Results showed that Dutch gifted students with dyslexia have higher NL literacy levels than averagely intelligent students with dyslexia. As in the NL, a stepwise pattern of group differences was found for English word reading and spelling, i.e., dyslexia < gifted/dyslexia < TD < gifted. However, it was not found for French and German literacy performance. These results point towards compensation: the higher English literacy levels of gifted/dyslexic students compared to their averagely intelligent dyslexic peers result from mechanisms that are unique to English as a FL. Differences in results between FLs are discussed in terms of variation in orthographic transparency and exposure.

Shared and Unique Risk Factors Underlying Mathematical Disability and Reading and Spelling Disability

High comorbidity rates have been reported between mathematical learning disabilities (MD) and reading and spelling disabilities (RSD). Research has identified skills related to math, such as number sense (NS) and visuospatial working memory (visuospatial WM), as well as to literacy, such as phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN) and verbal short-term memory (Verbal STM). In order to explain the high comorbidity rates between MD and RSD, 7–11-year-old children were assessed on a range of cognitive abilities related to literacy (PA, RAN, Verbal STM) and mathematical ability (visuospatial WM, NS). The group of children consisted of typically developing (TD) children (n = 32), children with MD (n = 26), children with RSD (n = 29), and combined MD and RSD (n = 43). It was hypothesized that, in line with the multiple deficit view on learning disorders, at least one unique predictor for both MD and RSD and a possible shared cognitive risk factor would be found to account for the comorbidity between the symptom dimensions literacy and math. Secondly, our hypotheses were that (a) a probabilistic multi-factorial risk factor model would provide a better fit to the data than a deterministic single risk factor model and (b) that a shared risk factor model would provide a better fit than the specific multi-factorial model. All our hypotheses were confirmed. NS and visuospatial WM were identified as unique cognitive predictors for MD, whereas PA and RAN were both associated with RSD. Also, a shared risk factor model with PA as a cognitive predictor for both RSD and MD fitted the data best, indicating that MD and RSD might co-occur due to a shared underlying deficit in phonological processing. Possible explanations are discussed in the context of sample selection and composition. This study shows that different cognitive factors play a role in mathematics and literacy, and that a phonological processing deficit might play a role in the occurrence of MD and RSD.

High Reading Skills Mask Dyslexia in Gifted Children

This study investigated how gifted children with dyslexia might be able to mask literacy problems and the role of possible compensatory mechanisms. The sample consisted of 121 Dutch primary school children that were divided over four groups (typically developing [TD] children, children with dyslexia, gifted children, gifted children with dyslexia). The test battery included measures of literacy (reading/spelling) and cognitive abilities related to literacy and language (phonological awareness [PA], rapid automatized naming [RAN], verbal short-term memory [VSTM], working memory [WM], grammar, and vocabulary). It was hypothesized that gifted children with dyslexia would outperform children with dyslexia on literacy tests. In addition, a core-deficit model including dyslexia-related weaknesses and a compensational model involving giftedness-related strengths were tested using Bayesian statistics to explain their reading/spelling performance. Gifted children with dyslexia performed on all literacy tests in between children with dyslexia and TD children. Their cognitive profile showed signs of weaknesses in PA and RAN and strengths in VSTM, WM, and language skills. Findings indicate that phonology is a risk factor for gifted children with dyslexia, but this is moderated by other skills such as WM, grammar, and vocabulary, providing opportunities for compensation of a cognitive deficit and masking of literacy difficulties.

Risk and protective factors in gifted children with dyslexia

This study investigated risk and protective factors associated with dyslexia and literacy development, both at the group and individual level, to gain more insight in underlying cognitive profiles and possibilities for compensation in high-IQ children. A sample of 73 Dutch primary school children included a dyslexic group, a gifted-dyslexic group, and a borderline-dyslexic group (i.e., gifted children with relative literacy problems). Children were assessed on literacy, phonology, language, and working memory. Competing hypotheses were formulated, comparing the core-deficit view to the twice-exceptionality view on compensation with giftedness-related strengths. The results showed no indication of compensation of dyslexia-related deficits by giftedness-related strengths in gifted children with dyslexia. The higher literacy levels of borderline children compared to gifted children with dyslexia seemed the result of both fewer combinations of risk factors and less severe phonological deficits in this group. There was no evidence for compensation by specific strengths more relevant to literacy development in the borderline group. Accordingly, the findings largely supported the core-deficit view, whereas no evidence for the twice-exceptionality view was found. Besides practical implications, the findings also add to knowledge about the different manifestations of dyslexia and associated underlying cognitive factors at the higher end of the intelligence spectrum.