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Reading Disability (reading + disability)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Psychology	57%
Medical Sciences	36%

Selected Abstracts

High Risk of Reading Disability and Speech Sound Disorder in Rolandic Epilepsy Families: Case,Control Study

EPILEPSIA, Issue 12 2007
Tara Clarke
Summary Purpose: Associations between rolandic epilepsy (RE) with reading disability (RD) and speech sound disorder (SSD) have not been tested in a controlled study. We conducted a case,control study to determine whether (1) RD and SSD odds are higher in RE probands than controls and (2) an RE proband predicts a family member with RD or SSD, hence suggesting a shared genetic etiology for RE, RD, and SSD. Methods: Unmatched case,control study with 55 stringently defined RE cases, 150 controls in the same age range lacking a primary brain disorder diagnosis, and their siblings and parents. Odds ratios (OR) were calculated by multiple logistic regression, adjusted for sex and age, and for relatives, also adjusted for comorbidity of RD and SSD in the proband. Results: RD was strongly associated with RE after adjustment for sex and age: OR 5.78 (95% CI: 2.86,11.69). An RE proband predicts RD in family members: OR 2.84 (95% CI: 1.38,5.84), but not independently of the RE proband's RD status: OR 1.30 (95% CI: 0.55,12.79). SSD was also comorbid with RE: adjusted OR 2.47 (95%CI: 1.22,4.97). An RE proband predicts SSD in relatives, even after controlling for sex, age and proband SSD comorbidity: OR 4.44 (95% CI: 1.93,10.22). Conclusions: RE is strongly comorbid with RD and SSD. Both RD and SSD are likely to be genetically influenced and may contribute to the complex genetic etiology of the RE syndrome. Siblings of RE patients are at high risk of RD and SSD and both RE patients and their younger siblings should be screened early. [source]

A Tiered Intervention Model for Early Vocabulary Instruction: The Effects of Tiered Instruction for Young Students At Risk for Reading Disability

LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH & PRACTICE, Issue 3 2010
Paige C. Pullen
Vocabulary knowledge at school entry is a robust predictor of later reading achievement. Many children begin formal reading instruction at a significant disadvantage due to low levels of vocabulary. Until recently, relatively few research studies examined the efficacy of vocabulary interventions for children in the early primary grades (e.g., before fourth grade), and even fewer addressed vocabulary intervention for students at increased risk for reading failure. In more recent work, researchers have begun to explore ways in which to diminish the "meaningful differences" in language achievement noted among children as they enter formal schooling. This article provides a review of a particularly effective model of vocabulary intervention based on shared storybook reading and situates this model in a context of tiered intervention, an emerging model of instructional design in the field of special education. In addition, we describe a quasi-experimental posttest-only study that examines the feasibility and effectiveness of the model for first-grade students. Participants were 224 first-grade students of whom 98 were identified as at risk for reading disability based on low levels of vocabulary. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance revealed significant differences on measures of target vocabulary knowledge at the receptive and context level, suggesting that students at risk for reading failure benefit significantly from a second tier of vocabulary instruction. Implications for classroom practice as well as future research are provided. [source]

Language Impairment and Reading Disability: Connections and Complexities Introduction to the Special Issue

LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH & PRACTICE, Issue 1 2006
Elaine R. Silliman
Researchers and practitioners in the fields of reading and language are well informed about the importance of phonological awareness in beginning reading. The purpose of this special issue of Learning Disabilities Research & Practice is to present recent research that extends the search for language and reading connections beyond the realm of phonological awareness. Many children with language impairment (LI) identified before formal schooling experience persistent difficulty in learning to read. Two interrelated issues are prerequisite for understanding the developmental course of events that might link language and reading (dis)ability in these children. One is an appreciation of exactly what is meant by LI, while the second concerns how LI should be explained. In this introductory article, we explore the complexities of these two issues, in particular the controversy between the domain-specific perspective and the domain-general perspective on the nature of specific LI (SLI). Consistent with these perspectives, future studies on possible language-reading links will need to measure language and related processes in greater breadth and depth, over time, and within a variety of experiential contexts. The five articles in this issue represent a critical first step in this direction. [source]

Levels of literacy among juvenile offenders: the incidence of specific reading difficulties

CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR AND MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2000
Margaret J. Snowling
Introduction Academic achievement is low among offenders. Yet there is little evidence that prisoners are less literate than the general population. Do they have more dyslexia? This paper considers three definitions of dyslexia to see whether they relate to young offenders' literacy difficulties. Method The reading and spelling skills of 91 15- to 17-year-old male juvenile offenders who were incarcerated are reported, together with assessments of their vocabulary and non-verbal (spatial) skills. Estimates of the prevalence of reading disability are considered in relation to different definitions of dyslexia. Results The regression of literacy skills on non-verbal ability yielded an estimated prevalence of 57% while a more conservative estimate of 43% followed from the regression of literacy skill on verbal ability, and 38% of the sample had specific phonological deficits. Many of the offenders had experienced social and family adversity and reported poor school attendance. Discussion It is proposed that as a group, juvenile offenders are best described as having general verbal deficits encompassing problems of language and literacy. Copyright © 2000 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source]

The impact of developmental speech and language impairments on the acquisition of literacy skills

DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES RESEARCH REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
C. Melanie Schuele
Abstract Children with developmental speech/language impairments are at higher risk for reading disability than typical peers with no history of speech/language impairment. This article reviews the literacy outcomes of children with speech/language impairments, clarifying the differential risk for three groups of children: speech production impairments alone, oral language impairments alone, and speech production and oral language impairments. Children at greatest risk for reading and writing disabilities are children with language impairments alone and children with comorbid speech impairments and language impairments. For children with speech impairments alone, there is limited risk for literacy difficulties. However, even when reading skills are within the average range, children with speech impairments may have difficulties in spelling. Children with language impairments are likely to display reading deficits in word decoding and reading comprehension. It is not clear what role early literacy interventions play in the amelioration of reading difficulties in these populations. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc. MRDD Research Reviews 2004;10:176,183. [source]

The role of sensorimotor impairments in dyslexia: a multiple case study of dyslexic children

DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2006
Sarah White
This study attempts to investigate the role of sensorimotor impairments in the reading disability that characterizes dyslexia. Twenty-three children with dyslexia were compared to 22 control children, matched for age and non-verbal intelligence, on tasks assessing literacy as well as phonological, visual, auditory and motor abilities. The dyslexic group as a whole were significantly impaired on phonological, but not sensorimotor, tasks. Analysis of individual data suggests that the most common impairments were on phonological and visual stress tasks and the vast majority of dyslexics had one of these two impairments. Furthermore, phonological skill was able to account for variation in literacy skill, to the exclusion of all sensorimotor factors, while neither auditory nor motor skill predicted any variance in phonological skill. Visual stress seems to account for a small proportion of dyslexics, independently of the commonly reported phonological deficit. However, there is little evidence for a causal role of auditory, motor or other visual impairments. [source]

Characterizing the ADHD phenotype for genetic studies

DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2005
Jim Stevenson
The genetic study of ADHD has made considerable progress. Further developments in the field will be reliant in part on identifying the most appropriate phenotypes for genetic analysis. The use of both categorical and dimensional measures of symptoms related to ADHD has been productive. The use of multiple reporters is a valuable feature of the characterization of psychopathology in children. It is argued that the use of aggregated measures to characterize the ADHD phenotype, particularly to establish its pervasiveness, is desirable. The recognition of the multiple comorbidities of ADHD can help to isolate more specific genetic influences. In relation to both reading disability and conduct disorder there is evidence that genes may be involved in the comorbid condition that are different from pure ADHD. To date, progress with the investigation of endophenotypes for ADHD has been disappointing. It is suggested that extending such studies beyond cognitive underpinnings to include physiological and metabolic markers might facilitate progress. [source]

Early home-based intervention in the Netherlands for children at familial risk of dyslexia

DYSLEXIA, Issue 3 2009
Sandra G. van Otterloo
Abstract Dutch children at higher familial risk of reading disability received a home-based intervention programme before formal reading instruction started to investigate whether this would reduce the risk of dyslexia. The experimental group (n=23) received a specific training in phoneme awareness and letter knowledge. A control group (n=25) received a non-specific training in morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. Both interventions were designed to take 10,min a day, 5 days a week for 10 weeks. Most parents were sufficiently able to work with the programme properly. At post-test the experimental group had gained more on phoneme awareness than the control group. The control group gained more on one of the morphology measures. On average, these specific training results did not lead to significant group differences in first-grade reading and spelling measures. However, fewer experimental children scored below 10th percentile on word recognition. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Test,retest effects in treatment studies of reading disability: the devil is in the detail

DYSLEXIA, Issue 4 2007
Genevieve McArthur
Abstract Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007; 13: 78,96) claim to show that the ,dyslexia dyspraxia attention-deficit treatment' (DDAT) benefits children with reading difficulties. However, Rack, Snowling, Hulme, and Gibbs (Dyslexia, 2007; 13: 97,104) argue that because this study did not include an untrained control group then ,all that needs to be postulated to explain the results reported is that children improve their scores on the DST screening tests simply as a result of repeated testing on the same activities' (p. 102). How likely is it that the linguistic gains reported by Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007; 13: 78,96) are due to test,retest effects? The results of previous exercise- and auditory-based treatment studies that included an untrained control group suggest that test,retest effects explain gains on around 50% of real-word reading tests, 33% of phonological recoding tests, 33% of phonological awareness tests, 17,25% of spoken language tests, and 15% of spelling tests. In addition, longer periods of time between test and retest sessions are associated with test,retest effects on measures of reading but not spoken language. These findings suggest that two of the four linguistic gains reported by Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007; 13: 78,96) are due to test,retest effects (phonemic segmentation and working memory). The remaining two tests are measures of spoken language and not reading. Hence, the data reported by Reynolds and Nicolson (Dyslexia, 2007; 13: 78,96) are not sufficient to support DDAT as an effective treatment for children with reading difficulties. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Genetic influences on reading difficulties in boys and girls: the Colorado twin study

DYSLEXIA, Issue 1 2006
Jesse L. Hawke
Abstract To test the hypothesis that the genetic etiology for reading disability may differ in males and females, data from identical and fraternal twin pairs were analysed using both concordance and multiple regression methods. The sample included 264 identical (129 male, 135 female) and 214 same-sex fraternal (121 male, 93 female) twin pairs in which at least one member of each pair had reading difficulties. The difference between the identical and fraternal twin pair concordance rates was slightly larger for females than for males, suggesting a possible sex difference in etiology; however, a loglinear analysis of the three-way interaction of sex, zygosity, and concordance was not significant (p,0.17). The estimate of group heritability (hg2), a standardized measure of the extent to which reading difficulties are due to genetic influences, was somewhat greater for females than males (0.65 vs 0.54), but this difference was also not significant (p,0.35). Gender differences in hg2 were larger for younger children (less than 11.5 years of age) than for older children. However, the three-way interaction of sex, zygosity, and age was not significant when age was treated either categorically (p,0.86) or continuously (p,0.71). Thus, results of this study provide little or no evidence for a differential genetic etiology of reading difficulties in males and females. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Early development of children at familial risk for Dyslexia,follow-up from birth to school age

DYSLEXIA, Issue 3 2004
H. Lyytinen
Abstract We review the main findings of the Jyväskylä of Dyslexia (JLD) which follows the development of children at familial risk for dyslexia (N = 107) and their controls (N = 93). We will illustrate the development of these two groups of children at ages from birth to school entry in the skill domains that have been connected to reading and reading disability in the prior literature. At school entry, the highest score on the decoding task among the poorer half (median) of the at risk children,i.e. of those presumably being most likely genetically affected,is 1 SD below the mean of the control group. Thus, the familial risk for dyslexia shows expected consequences. Among the earliest measures in which group differences as well as significant predictive associations with the first steps in reading have emerged, are indices of speech processing in infancy. Likewise, various measures of early language including pronunciation accuracy, phonological, and morphological skills (but not performance IQ) show both group differences and predictive correlations, the majority of which become stronger as the reliability of the measures increases by age. Predictive relationships tend to be strong in general but higher in the at risk group because of its larger variance in both the predictor variables and in the dependent measures, such as early acquisition of reading. The results are thus promising in increasing our understanding needed for early identification and prevention of dyslexia. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

High Risk of Reading Disability and Speech Sound Disorder in Rolandic Epilepsy Families: Case,Control Study

A Tiered Intervention Model for Early Vocabulary Instruction: The Effects of Tiered Instruction for Young Students At Risk for Reading Disability

Phonological Awareness and Rapid Naming Skills of Children with Reading Disabilities and Children with Reading Disabilities Who Are At Risk for Mathematics Difficulties

LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH & PRACTICE, Issue 3 2008
Justin C. Wise
Limited research has examined the skills of children with a reading disability (RD) and children with RD and a mathematics disability (MD). Even less research has examined the phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in these two groups of children and how these skills relate to reading and math achievement. Additionally, various classification criteria are frequently implemented to classify children with MD. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the PA and RAN skills in children who met different criteria for RD only and children with RD who are at risk for mathematics difficulties (MDR). Participants were 114 second- or third-grade students with RD from public elementary schools in three large metropolitan areas. Students were classified as at risk for mathematics difficulties utilizing a 25th-percentile cutoff and a 15th-percentile cutoff as assessed by the KeyMath-Revised Test (Connolly, 1988). A series of PA and RAN measures were administered along with a range of reading and mathematics measures. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that children with RD only evidenced a different pattern of results compared to children with RD + MDR. Additionally, using a more stringent criterion to classify children at risk for mathematics difficulties resulted in a differential pattern of results when compared to a less stringent classification criterion. [source]

Growth in Precursor and Reading-Related Skills: Do Low-Achieving and IQ-Discrepant Readers Develop Differently?

LEARNING DISABILITIES RESEARCH & PRACTICE, Issue 1 2002
Kimberly J. O'Malley
Poor readers who met low achievement and IQ-discrepancy definitions of reading disability were compared with nonimpaired readers on their development of eight precursor and reading-related skills to evaluate developmental differences prior to students' identification as reading disabled. Results indicated no evidence for differences between the two groups of poor readers in the development of the eight skills, with three exceptions. Students in the IQ-discrepant group demonstrated greater growth in letter sound knowledge, greater mean performance in visual-motor integration at the beginning of first grade, and greater deceleration in rapid naming of letters. When compared to the nonimpaired group, low-achieving readers demonstrated poorer performance and development in all skills, while the IQ-discrepant readers demonstrated poorer performance and development in phonemic awareness, rapid naming of letters and objects, spelling, and word reading. The largely null results for comparisons between the two groups of poor readers challenges the validity of the two-group classification of reading disabilities based on IQ-discrepancy. [source]

Specificity and characteristics of learning disabilities

THE JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY AND ALLIED DISCIPLINES, Issue 10 2005
Natasha Eisenmajer
Background:, The specificity of impairments in specific reading disabilities (SRD) and specific language impairments (SLI) has recently been questioned, with many children recruited for studies of SRD and SLI demonstrating impairments in both reading and oral language development. This has implications for the results of SRD and SLI studies where both reading and oral language skills are not assessed. Thus there is a need to compare the profiles of children with both oral language and reading impairments to groups of children with SRD and SLI. Methods:, The reading, oral language, short-term auditory memory, phonological processing, spelling, and maths abilities of 151 children (aged between 7 and 12 years) drawn from a Learning Disabilities Clinic were assessed. Results:, Five groups were identified, including children who demonstrated either a specific reading disability or a specific language impairment and children who showed evidence of both reading and oral language impairments. Differences were found between the groups on maths, phonological processing, short-term auditory memory, and spelling measures, with the children displaying both language and reading deficits generally performing at a lower level than the children with specific reading or language deficits. Conclusions:, It was concluded that more careful screening needs to be conducted in both clinical and research settings to accurately identify the nature of deficits in children with reading and oral language difficulties. Furthermore, a third and separate category of children with a mixed pattern of impairments needs to be considered. [source]

Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades?

THE JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY AND ALLIED DISCIPLINES, Issue 1 2004
Frank R. Vellutino
We summarize some of the most important findings from research evaluating the hypothesized causes of specific reading disability (,dyslexia') over the past four decades. After outlining components of reading ability, we discuss manifest causes of reading difficulties, in terms of deficiencies in component reading skills that might lead to such difficulties. The evidence suggests that inadequate facility in word identification due, in most cases, to more basic deficits in alphabetic coding is the basic cause of difficulties in learning to read. We next discuss hypothesized deficiencies in reading-related cognitive abilities as underlying causes of deficiencies in component reading skills. The evidence in these areas suggests that, in most cases, phonological skills deficiencies associated with phonological coding deficits are the probable causes of the disorder rather than visual, semantic, or syntactic deficits, although reading difficulties in some children may be associated with general language deficits. Hypothesized deficits in general learning abilities (e.g., attention, association learning, cross-modal transfer etc.) and low-level sensory deficits have weak validity as causal factors in specific reading disability. These inferences are, by and large, supported by research evaluating the biological foundations of dyslexia. Finally, evidence is presented in support of the idea that many poor readers are impaired because of inadequate instruction or other experiential factors. This does not mean that biological factors are not relevant, because the brain and environment interact to produce the neural networks that support reading acquisition. We conclude with a discussion of the clinical implications of the research findings, focusing on the need for enhanced instruction. [source]

Planar Asymmetry Tips the Phonological Playground and Environment Raises the Bar

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2001
Mark A. Eckert
Reading readiness varies as a function of family and environmental variables. This study of 11-year-old children (N=39) was designed to determine if there was an additional or interactive contribution of brain structure. Evidence is presented that both environmental and biological variables predict phonological development. Temporal lobe (planar) asymmetry, hand preference, family history of reading disability, and SES explained over half of the variance in phonological and verbal performance. The results demonstrate a linear association between cerebral organization and phonological skill within socioeconomic groups. These data provide concrete evidence to support the commonly held assumption that both environmental and biological factors are independent determinants of a child's ability to process linguistic information. [source]