Abstract
Several independent studies have supported the association of DYX1C1 with dyslexia, but its role in general reading development remains unclear. Here, we investigated the contribution of this gene to reading, with a focus on orthographic skills, in a sample of 284 unrelated Chinese children aged 5 to 11 years who were participating in the Chinese Longitudinal Study of Reading Development. We tested this association using a quantitative approach for Chinese character reading, Chinese character dictation, orthographic judgment, and visual skills. Significant or marginally significant associations were observed at the marker rs11629841 with children's orthographic judgments at ages 7 and 8 years (all P values<0.020). Significant associations with Chinese character dictation (all P values<0.013) were also observed for this single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at ages 9, 10, and 11 years. Further analyses revealed that the association with orthographic skills was specific to the processing of specific components of characters (P values<0.046). No association was found at either SNP of rs3743205 or rs57809907. Our findings suggest that DYX1C1 influences reading development in the general Chinese population and supports a universal effect of this gene.
Highlights
Dyslexia, which affects 5–10% of schoolaged children across populations, is a specific impairment in learning to read that is independent of educational opportunities and general cognitive abilities [1,2,3]
To rule out the possibility that basic visual skills play a major role in the DYX1C1-orthography relationship, we examined the association between DYX1C1 and visual skills
We examined three single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) that were previously found to be associated with dyslexia in previous studies [13,14,15,17,20,21], including the two SNPs originally reported by Taipale et al [15] and replicated by Wigg et al and Scerri et al [14,17] and another SNP that was reported by Wigg et al [17]
Summary
Dyslexia (reading disability), which affects 5–10% of schoolaged children across populations, is a specific impairment in learning to read that is independent of educational opportunities and general cognitive abilities [1,2,3]. Recent studies have supported the role of DYX1C1 in normal reading variations, albeit with different SNPs (e.g., rs17819126) In these studies [16,18], as in the present study, children with dyslexia were neither selected for, nor were they screened out, and they are assumed to represent the low tail of the normal distribution of reading ability in the population. Lim et al [13] genotyped eight SNPs for 393 individuals from 131 Chinese families with dyslexia and reported a significant association of rs3743205, but not rs57809907, to several phenotypes of reading, including orthographic skills. We report data examining the association of polymorphisms in DYX1C1 with reading, spelling, and orthographic skills in a general population of Chinese children. We examined three SNPs that were previously found to be associated with dyslexia in previous studies [13,14,15,17,20,21], including the two SNPs (rs3743205 and rs57809907) originally reported by Taipale et al [15] and replicated by Wigg et al and Scerri et al [14,17] and another SNP (rs11629841) that was reported by Wigg et al [17]
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