History Of Dyslexia Research Articles

The Influence of Family History on Reading Remediation and Reading Skills in Children With Dyslexia

This study examined whether family history of reading disability influences the efficacy of reading remediation. A retrospective review of children’s performance in a reading remediation program was carried out along with parental interviews for 102 families. Significant improvements were found in the areas of nonword decoding, phonological awareness, and spelling following the reading remediation program. Younger children and children with lower IQs tended to receive less benefit from the remediation program. Having a paternal history of dyslexia was associated with smaller improvements in nonword decoding scores. Maternal history of dyslexia was not a significant predictor of changes in nonword decoding. These findings suggest that some reading skills may be most effectively integrated at later stages of development. They also point to the possibility of unique relationships that may exist between parents and children who have reading disabilities.

Kindergarten Risk Factors, Cognitive Factors, and Teacher Judgments as Predictors of Early Reading in Dutch

This study focused on the predictive value of risk factors, cognitive factors, and teachers' judgments in a sample of 462 kindergartners for their early reading skills and reading failure at the beginning of Grade 1. With respect to risk factors, enrollment in speech-language therapy, history of dyslexia or speech-language problems in the family, and the role of gender were considered. None of these risk factors were significantly related to reading performance. Cognitive factors in this study included letter knowledge, rapid naming ability, and nonword repetition skills. Of these skills, letter knowledge seemed to have the highest correlation with reading. Kindergarten teachers' judgments, including a task assignment scale and teachers' predictions, demonstrated a significant relationship with reading. Finally, to judge whether these predictors could identify reading disabilities, the discriminatory power of all predictors was assessed and appeared to be insufficient. Implications for screening purposes are discussed.

Speechreading and its association with reading among deaf, hearing and dyslexic individuals

Reading and speechreading are both visual skills based on speech and language processing. Here we explore individual differences in speechreading in profoundly prelingually deaf adults, hearing adults with a history of dyslexia, and hearing adults with no history of a literacy disorder. Speechreading skill distinguished the three groups: the deaf group were better speechreaders than hearing controls, who were better than the group with a history of dyslexia. The dyslexic group, while within range of hearing controls in terms of reading, nevertheless showed a residual deficit in speech/language processing when tested with silent speech. Within‐group correlations suggested different associations between speechreading subtasks, reading and language skills. In particular, in the deaf and dyslexic groups, but not in the hearing controls, speechreading skill correlated with reading ability.

Two visual motion processing deficits in developmental dyslexia associated with different reading skills deficits.

Developmental dyslexia is associated with deficits in the processing of visual motion stimuli, and some evidence suggests that these motion processing deficits are related to various reading subskills deficits. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying such associations. This study lays a richer groundwork for exploration of such mechanisms by more comprehensively and rigorously characterizing the relationship between motion processing deficits and reading subskills deficits. Thirty-six adult participants, 19 of whom had a history of developmental dyslexia, completed a battery of visual, cognitive, and reading tests. This battery combined motion processing and reading subskills measures used across previous studies and added carefully matched visual processing control tasks. Results suggest that there are in fact two distinct motion processing deficits in developmental dyslexia, rather than one as assumed by previous research, and that each of these deficits is associated with a different type of reading subskills deficit. A deficit in detecting coherent motion is selectively associated with low accuracy on reading subskills tests, and a deficit in discriminating velocities is selectively associated with slow performance on these same tests. In addition, evidence from visual processing control tasks as well as self-reports of ADHD symptoms suggests that these motion processing deficits are specific to the domain of visual motion, and result neither from a broader visual deficit, nor from the sort of generalized attention deficit commonly comorbid with developmental dyslexia. Finally, dissociation between these two motion processing deficits suggests that they may have distinct neural and functional underpinnings. The two distinct patterns of motion processing and reading deficits demonstrated by this study may reflect separable underlying neurocognitive mechanisms of developmental dyslexia.

Further evidence for persisting difficulties in orthographic learning in highly educated adults with a history of developmental dyslexia

Adults who present with a history of developmental dyslexia (DD) often continue to be poor spellers, even if they have acquired relatively normal reading abilities and are highly educated (e.g., Miles, 1993). This has been interpreted as reflecting incomplete or imprecise orthographic representations in long-term memory which are inadequate for perfect spelling but which might nevertheless provide partial clues sufficient for reading (Holmes & Carruthers, 1998). However, the processes underlying the long-term acquisition of orthographic representations in adults with a history of DD have not yet been extensively investigated. The aim of the present study was to explore the ability to acquire new orthographic representations in adults with DD. More specifically, learning of orthographic representations for unfamiliar items (pseudo-words) was used in order to ensure a strict control of the degree of exposure to the orthographic material that has to be learned. Both explicit (task 1) and incidental (task 2) learning procedures were administered.

Dyslexia and psychosocial factors. A follow-up study of young Norwegian adults with a history of dyslexia in childhood

The present study is a follow-up of two different groups of young adults with a history ofdyslexia problems in childhood. Group A was drawn from a larger longitudinal study wherestudents were diagnosed with dyslexia at age 10. Group B was recruited at a child psychiatricclinic and also had dyslexic problems. Measures of educational level, life satisfaction andpsychosocial factors were applied. The assessment was carried out by means of tests,questionnaires and personal interviews. The results showed lower levels of educationalattainment in group B as well as lower satisfaction with health, friends and education comparedto group A and a normative group. Both dyslexic groups showed more psychiatric problemsthan those in the normative sample.

Sound-Symbol Learning in Children with Dyslexia

This study evaluated the effect of sound-symbol association training on visual and phonological memory in children with a history of dyslexia. Pretests of phonological and visual memory, a sound-symbol training procedure, and phonological and visual memory posttests were administered to children with dyslexia, to children whose dyslexia had been compensated through remedial training, and to age- and reading level-matched comparison groups. Deficits in visual and phonological memory and memory for sound-symbol associations were demonstrated in the dyslexia group. For children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been remediated, the sound-symbol training scores were significantly associated with word and pseudoword reading scores and were significantly lower than those of the comparison groups. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated showed significantly less facilitation of phonological memory following the training than did typical readers. Skilled readers showed some reduction in accuracy of visual memory following the training, which may be the result of interference of verbalization with a predominantly visual task. A parallel decrease was not observed in the children with dyslexia, possibly because these children did not use the verbal cues. Children with dyslexia and children whose dyslexia had been compensated seemed to have difficulty encoding the novel sounds in memory. As a result, they derived less phonological memory advantage and less visual memory interference from the training than did typical readers. Children in the compensated dyslexia group scored lower on sound-symbol training than their age peers. In other respects, the scores of these children were equivalent to those of the typically reading comparison groups. Children in the compensated dyslexia group exhibited higher phonological rehearsal, iconic memory, and associative memory scores than children in the dyslexia group. Implications for the remediation of dyslexia are discussed.

Developing literacy in families with histories of reading problems: preliminary results from a longitudinal study of young children of dyslexic parents

ABSTRACT This paper reports on an ongoing longitudinal study, including 149 children in families with a family history of dyslexia and 300 control children from unaffected families, who were studied cross‐sectionally. The aim of the study is to explore the developmental links between early linguistic, cognitive and emotional factors and later problems with written language. Preliminary findings on prevalence, early precursors of reading problems and the potential influence of parental attitudes on the literacy development of the children are discussed.

Frank Benson's teachings on acquired disorders of written language (with addenda)

Benson's taxonomy of alexia and agraphia is presented. Clinical characterization of the di erent alexias is reviewed. It is pointed out that Benson rightfully insisted on the following facts: A past history of developmental dyslexia may have a strong impact on the clinical manifestations of acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia; clinical evidence can also vary from one writing system to another; and recovery of acquired reading and writing disorders is in certain cases related to a takeover of the right hemisphere. An attempt at reconciliating neurosciences and cognitive sciences is introduced in the second section of the paper. A model for reading aloud and a model for writing to dictation are presented. It is proposed that there are three manners of reading and writing related to occipital frontal interactions for reading aloud and retrorolandic frontal interactions for writing. Finally, occipital alexia, parietal-temporal alexia, frontal alexia and agraphia are examined from both the neuroscience point of view and from the cognitive sciences perspective.

Special talents in Geschwind's and Galaburda's theory of cerebral lateralization: an examination in a female population.

Geschwind and Galaburda (1985) proposed that delayed growth of posterior left hemisphere sites in male dyslexics are associated with markers of anomalous dominance (AD) and special cognitive talents. We found that talent in a female population was related to the strength of nonright-handedness, and was elevated in right-handed individuals with histories of familial left-handedness. Subjects reporting a history of dyslexia tended to be musically talented. While immune disorders were not related to talent for the whole population, they did co-occur with talents in a group of 10 individuals reporting 7 or more AD markers.

A history of dyslexia in patients with epilepsy: Clinical associations

A history of dyslexia was significantly more frequent among 200 adult patients with epilepsy than among 130 age-matched controls (9% vs. 2.3%; odds ratio = 4.19; 95% CI = 1.21-15). Among the 200 patients with epilepsy, left-handed women and men with onset of seizures by age 12 had the highest frequency of a history of dyslexia. Several possible explanations for an association between dyslexia and epilepsy are discussed.

Developmental Gerstmann syndrome

Frank Benson and I published this paper for several reasons. Kinsbourne and Warrington had already reported the presence of Gerstmann’s syndrome in childhood. Our first case was of interest, however, since he was a child of superior intellectual capacities without any history of dyslexia.