The hen or the egg? Which comes first--antisocial emotional disorders or reading disability?

Abstract

Summary. The sequential relationship of antisocial emotional disorders and reading difficulties was examined in a longitudinal study of a sample of 198 boys in their first two years at school. Teachers completed behaviour questionnaires at school entry and at the end of Primary One and Two. The children were tested for reading readiness at school entry and for reading performance at the end of Primary One and Two. Antisocial deviance was shown to precede later reading difficulties, but was associated at school entry with poor performance on the tests of reading readiness. An examination of the predictive effects of low performance on reading readiness tests and the reading test at the end of Primary One indicated that later antisocial deviance was not related at this stage of school to earlier poor performance. These results call into question, for this age group, the suggestion that reading backwardness leads to antisocial emotional disorders.