Abstract
Purpose of reviewWe review current knowledge about the nature of reading development and disorders, distinguishing between the processes involved in learning to decode print, and the processes involved in reading comprehension.Recent findingsChildren with decoding difficulties/dyslexia experience deficits in phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge and rapid automatized naming in the preschool years and beyond. These phonological/language difficulties appear to be proximal causes of the problems in learning to decode print in dyslexia. We review data from a prospective study of children at high risk of dyslexia to show that being at family risk of dyslexia is a primary risk factor for poor reading and children with persistent language difficulties at school entry are more likely to develop reading problems. Early oral language difficulties are strong predictors of later difficulties in reading comprehension.SummaryThere are two distinct forms of reading disorder in children: dyslexia (a difficulty in learning to translate print into speech) and reading comprehension impairment. Both forms of reading problem appear to be predominantly caused by deficits in underlying oral language skills. Implications for screening and for the delivery of robust interventions for language and reading are discussed.
Highlights
Learning to read is one of the key outcomes for early education and children who have reading difficulties often enter a downward spiral of low educational attainment and poor employment prospects with negative consequences for adult well-being
We began by arguing that there are two types of reading disorder and we showed that the predictors of decoding differ from the predictors of reading comprehension
Being at family risk of dyslexia is an important risk factor and a major proximal cause is in speech processing difficulties
Summary
Learning to read is one of the key outcomes for early education and children who have reading difficulties often enter a downward spiral of low educational attainment and poor employment prospects with negative consequences for adult well-being. When we consider problems in learning to read, it is important to make a clear distinction between decoding (the accuracy or fluency of reading aloud) and comprehension (the adequacy of understanding text). Problems in learning to decode (developmental dyslexia) and problems in learning to comprehend text (reading comprehension impairment) are distinct forms of difficulty, both of which appear to depend principally upon impairments of oral language development. As we will outline below, Dyslexia is related to early problems in oral language development, with persisting problems in the development of speech-sound (phonological) skills being a important obstacle to learning to decode print. Reading comprehension impairment depends critically upon broader oral language difficulties; problems with understanding word meanings, and problems with grammatical skills.
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