Screening Protocol for Early Identification of Brazilian Children at Risk for Dyslexia.

Giseli D Germano,Simone A Capellini,Alexandra B P De C César

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01763

Giseli D Germano, Simone A Capellini + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01763

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Abstract

Early identification of students at risk of dyslexia has been an educational challenge in the past years. This research had two main goals. First, we aimed to develop a screening protocol for early identification of Brazilian children at risk for dyslexia; second, we aimed to identify the predictive variables of this protocol using Principal Component Analysis. The major step involved in developing this protocol was the selection of variables, which were chosen based on the literature review and linguistic criteria. The screening protocol was composed of seven cognitive-linguistic skills: Letter naming; Phonological Awareness (which comprises the following subtests: Rhyme production, Rhyme identification, Syllabic segmentation, Production of words from a given phoneme, Phonemic Synthesis, and Phonemic analysis); Phonological Working memory, Rapid naming Speed; Silent reading; Reading of words and non-words; and Auditory Comprehension of sentences from pictures. A total of 149 children, aged from 6 years to 6 and 11, of both genders who were enrolled in the 1st grade of elementary public schools were submitted to the screening protocol. Principal Component Analysis revealed four factors, accounting for 64.45% of the variance of the Protocol variables: first factor (“pre-reading”), second factor (“decoding”), third factor (“Reading”), and fourth factor “Auditory processing.” The factors found corroborate those reported in the National and International literature and have been described as early signs of dyslexia and reading problems.

Highlights

Identification of students at risk for dyslexia has been an educational challenge in the past years
Fukuda and Capellini, 2011, 2012), attempting to develop a screening protocol for early identification of children at risk for dyslexia. These studies have reported that phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and rapid naming correspond to the central phonological mechanisms of acquiring reading and writing that have been reported by De Jong and Van der Leij (1999)
Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was carried out to reduce the set of Protocol variables before determining the number of variables that could contribute to the early identification of children with dyslexia, such as skills that are predictors of reading acquisition (Table 3); Rotation Method used: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization

Summary

Introduction

Identification of students at risk for dyslexia has been an educational challenge in the past years. Scientific research has explored the nature, etiology, assessment, and intervention of this learning disorder, educators are still having a hard time recognizing its signs, which suggest that a child might be at risk for reading failure without being identified. Such early identification should allow interventions to be implemented before a downward spiral of underachievement, lowered self-esteem and poor motivation sets in (Shaywitz and Shaywitz, 2005; Kirby et al, 2010; Snowling, 2013; Hulme et al, 2015). The consensus between these studies is that the first signs of dyslexia include delays in speech and language development, with phonological memory (non-word repetition) and expressive language (naming) skills being affected, as mentioned in the studies of Carroll et al (2014) and Thompson et al (2015)

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