Specific Reading Difficulties Research Articles

Reading Recovery teachers discuss Reading Recovery: a qualitative investigation

Reading Recovery is an early intervention program used around the world for at-risk readers. Developed at a time when constructivist principles dominated educational philosophy, its efficacy has caused debate and division over the last three decades. This qualitative study employed in-depth interviews and observations to explore 10 Reading Recovery teachers' views and experiences about working with the program. Findings revealed that the program was implemented by participants as originally prescribed and its contents were well regarded. However, deeper analysis revealed that Reading Recovery teachers held the view that the program was best suited for children with innocent deficits such as mild maturational delay but were not necessarily confident about its ability to meet the needs of children with various clinical conditions, including specific reading difficulty. Theoretical, ethical and clinical implications are explored regarding the utility of the Reading Recovery program as an early intervention program for low progress readers.

Morphological Awareness and Reading Difficulties in Adolescent Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners and Their Classmates

This study investigated the role of morphological awareness weaknesses in the reading difficulties encountered by Spanish-speaking language minority learners and their native English-speaking peers in sixth grade. One hundred and thirty-eight students (82 language minority learners; 56 native English speakers) were assessed on English measures of reading comprehension, silent word reading fluency, and derivational morphological awareness. Students with specific reading comprehension difficulties, specific word reading difficulties, and combined difficulties were identified using categorical cut-scores. Findings indicated that morphological awareness differentiated skilled readers from students with reading difficulties. Substantial proportions of students with reading difficulties (38%–63%, depending on reading difficulty subtype) demonstrated weaknesses in morphological awareness. Language minority learners with reading difficulties were particularly likely to demonstrate weaknesses in morphological awareness (55%–64%), compared to native English speakers with similar reading difficulties (13%–50%). Findings suggest the diagnostic potential of morphological awareness for adolescent learners with reading difficulties, especially those from language minority backgrounds.

Psychological Resources of Adults With Developmental Dyslexia

The aim of our study was to describe specific psychological resources of adults with developmental dyslexia and compare them with psychological resources of adults without developmental dyslexia. Potential differences were analyzed in visual-spatial, creative, and motivational abilities. No evidence was found for either creative, or visuospatial superiority in adults with developmental dyslexia. The results suggest, however, that visual-spatial processing of nonverbal material by adults with developmental dyslexia allows them to efficiently execute tasks that are based on sequential material. Moreover, the participants with specific difficulties in reading and writing exhibited a significantly higher level of aspirations than their peers without such difficulties with a comparable level of educational achievement. These results suggest that succeeding in different fields by highly functioning adult dyslexics may depend on personality and motivational factors, rather than cognitive factors.

The Hong Kong Behaviour Checklist for Primary Students: Developing a brief dyslexia screening measure

The authors report on the development of a brief dyslexia screening measure based on revising the 65-item Hong Kong Behaviour Checklist of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing. Teachers’ ratings of 1063 primary students aged 6–14 years on the behaviour checklist provided data for its psychometric evaluation using traditional measurement and Rasch measurement model analyses. Rasch scaling suggested that the revised 36-item checklist could be regarded as a unidimensional scale that assesses global dyslexic dysfunction, and receiver operating characteristics analysis suggested that a score of 18 could be an optimal cut-off score when it is used as a dyslexia screening measure. The validity of this revised checklist was supported by its substantial and significant correlations with external measures of literacy and cognitive skills. Implications of the findings for the use of adaptive testing to provide an effective procedure for screening are discussed.

Poor Auditory Task Scores in Children With Specific Reading and Language Difficulties: Some Poor Scores Are More Equal Than Others

Children with specific reading disability (SRD) or specific language impairment (SLI), who scored poorly on an auditory discrimination task, did up to 140 runs on the failed task. Forty-one percent of the children produced widely fluctuating scores that did not improve across runs (untrainable errant performance), 23% produced widely fluctuating scores in early runs that did improve across runs (trainable errant performance), 26% produced stable poor scores that did not improve across runs (untrainable nonerrant poor performance), and 23% produced stable poor scores that did improve across runs (trainable nonerrant performance). In most cases, trainable and untrainable errant performance, and nonerrant poor performance, could be predicted from a child's first two auditory task scores. These results illustrate that poor auditory task scores produced by children with SRD and SLI do not reflect a unitary deficit, do not necessarily reflect poor perception, and do not always respond to training.

Task Avoidance, Number Skills and Parental Learning Difficulties as Predictors of Poor Response to Instruction

Altogether 1,285 Finnish children were followed up from the end of kindergarten through Grade 1. All were nonreaders at school entrance. The aim was to delineate predictors of resistance to treatment that are evidenced as little or no reading progress during Grade 1. On the basis of reading achievement in Grade 1 spring, four subgroups were formed. These were fast, average, and slow reading acquisition and slow progress in both reading and math. Kindergarten spring scores in phonological awareness, letter knowledge, rapid naming, and number skills differentiated well among the groups, the latter two being more robust predictors. Task avoidance added to the prediction over and above cognitive skills. Its effect disappeared when parental history of reading and math difficulties was included in the equation. The present results depict poor response to instruction as a general learning problem rather than a specific reading difficulty. Poor response to instruction differs from dyslexia also in that treatment resisters start school with cognitive prerequisites that do not indicate severe reading and math problems.

Specific Reading Difficulties in Chinese, English, or Both

What are the longitudinal cognitive profiles of Hong Kong Chinese children with specific reading difficulties in Chinese only, in English only, or both? A total of 16 poor readers each of Chinese (PC) and English (PE) and 8 poor readers of both orthographies (PB) were compared to a control sample (C) of 16 children; all were drawn from a statistically representative sample of 154 Hong Kong Chinese children tested at ages 5 to 9 years. PE and PB children’s mothers had lower education levels than did the other groups. With children’s ages and mothers’ education levels statistically controlled, the PE, PC, and PB groups were significantly lower than the C group on phonological awareness. The PB and PE groups also scored significantly lower than the others on English vocabulary across years, whereas the PC and PB groups were significantly poorer than the C and PE groups on morphological awareness across years. Finally, the PB group was significantly slower than the other groups on speed naming at every age tested, underscoring the potential importance of automaticity in reading across orthographies. Findings highlight the need to consider the issue of how to identify reading difficulties in a second language.

Reading-Related Skills, Reading Achievement, and Inattention: A Correlational Study

Here we investigated the psychological texture of a literacy-related disability, specific reading disability (SRD, also referred to as dyslexia), as it is manifested in Russian and defined in the Russian Federation. Specifically, we attempted to understand the emerging properties of this deficit among 96 students in grades 2 and 3 (38 girls and 58 boys, aged 7.90–10.42 years, mean = 8.87, SD = 0.56) attending a public primary school in St. Petersburg, Russia. Based on the linguistic properties of the Russian language, we designed a literacy-skills assessment battery that incorporates both internationally common (i.e., the traditional IQ-achievement discrepancy-based) and Russia-specific (i.e., typology-based) approaches to identifying reading difficulties in emergent readers. In addition, we measured children’s levels of general intelligence, inattention, and hyperactivity (i.e., the symptomatology related to attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders, ADHD). Multi-trait-multi-method methodology was employed in that data were collected both from teachers and students for multiple reading-related processes, using both self-report and maximum performance assessments. The results are interpreted in terms of the convergence (and lack of such) between the common and country/language-specific approaches to the identification of reading difficulties, and the relevance of the general level of intelligence to diagnosing specific reading difficulties in Russian and in Russia.

Issues in the identification and ongoing assessment of ESL students with reading difficulties for reading intervention

Reading difficulties and second language acquisition have attracted international interest among researchers and practitioners in recent years. This is because increased mobility between countries means that educators are faced with the problem of providing appropriate assessment and assistance for students with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. There is a growing international consensus in the literature that second-language (L2) learners have generally been underdiagnosed and overrepresented in special education classes. Consequently there is a need to help teachers more adequately identify and assist L2 students who experience specific reading difficulties. This article proposes the use of a language model of reading difficulties based on the Simple View of Reading to identify students with reading difficulties. It also discusses relevant ongoing assessment issues to prevent inappropriate special education referrals. It recommends a responsive approach to intervention and suggests using multi-faceted intervention programs including the promotion of positive home-school climates to address the needs of such students.

Could Specific Braille Reading Difficulties Result from Developmental Dyslexia?

A proportion of children with visual impairments have specific reading difficulties that cannot be easily explained. This article reviews the data on problems with braille reading and interprets them from the framework of the temporal–processing deficit theory of developmental dyslexia.

Estimating incidence of developmental dyslexia in Hong Kong: What differences do different criteria make?

Based on the data of a school-referred sample of Cantonese-speaking Chinese children who met the Hong Kong criterion of dyslexia, we estimated for developmental dyslexia of Chinese children aged between 6 and 10½ in Hong Kong an incidence rate of 0.66% and a gender ratio of 3.29 boys to 1 girl over a four-year period. We also explored the differences in estimates based on this Hong Kong criterion that emphasizes cognitive markers with more conventional discrepancy-based criteria. In view of the possible biases in self-selection and underreporting in the data of the school-referred sample, we compared the figures with those derived from the sample of the normative study of the Hong Kong Test of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing, which yielded an estimate of 9.7% in prevalence rate and boy-girl gender ratio of 2 to 1 over a one-year period. The differences in estimates based on the two samples and implications of the findings are discussed in light of the limitations of the study.

Expressive versus receptive language skills in specific reading disorder

Despite ample research into the language skills of children with specific reading disorder no studies so far have investigated whether there may be a difference between expressive and receptive language skills in this population. Yet, neuro‐anatomical models would predict that children who have specific reading disorder which is not associated with movement or attention difficulties, would have lower receptive language skills than expressive. This study investigates the difference between expressive and receptive language skills in a sample of 17 children with specific reading difficulty aged between 7 and 12 years. They were administered a battery of two receptive and two expressive language measures. The results showed that as the neuro‐anatomical model would predict, the children scored significantly lower on tests of receptive than on tests of expressive language skills.

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Understanding and Supporting Children with ADHD: strategies for teachers, parents and other professionals Lesley Hughes and Paul Cooper Asperger Syndrome in the Inclusive Classroom Stacey W. Betts, Dion E. Betts and Lisa Gerber‐Eckard Autistic Spectrum Disorders in the Secondary School Lynn Plimley and Maggie Bowen Dyslexia Guidance – Helping Pupils with Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing Martin Turner and Philippa Bodien Mapping SEN – Routes Through Identification to Intervention Amanda Kirby Learning Styles in Action Barbara Prashing

Literacy in Ireland

Literacy in Ireland

Prevalence, gender ratio and gender differences in reading‐related cognitive abilities among Chinese children with dyslexia in Hong Kong

Based on the data of the normative study of the Hong Kong test of specific learning difficulties in reading and writing, and the Test of visual‐perceptual skills (non‐motor)—Revised, 99 children aged between 6 and 10½ years were identified as children with dyslexia out of the normative sample of 690 children. By excluding 12 children known to score below average in IQ, 87 children, including 20 children not tested for IQ, could be regarded as children with dyslexia, yielding a prevalence rate of 12.6% and a boy:girl gender ratio of 1.6 to 1. The figures would become 9.7% and 2.0 to 1 if the 20 children were omitted from computation. However, gender imbalance could not be readily explained by gender differences in reading‐related cognitive abilities, as there were only minor and subtle differences. Regression analyses to evaluate the relative contribution of different cognitive abilities to reading and writing suggested that orthographic knowledge and naming speed were most important among children with dyslexia. Implications of the findings and the need for early intervention are discussed.

Natureza das dificuldades de leitura em crianças brasileiras com dislexia do desenvolvimento

According to an information processing approach, different reading strategies prevail at different stages and depending on print characteristics.The first stage, logographic, is marked by the prevalence of the logographic strategy in which recognition is limited to a few familiar words and plagued with paralexias. The second stage, alphabetical, is marked by the prevalence of a phonological strategy, based on grapheme-phoneme decoding, which permits reading new words, provided their spelling is regular. The third stage, orthographic, is marked by the prevalence of a lexical strategy, based on visual recognition, which permits reading irregularly-spelled words, provided they are familiar. Reading Competence Test (RCT) analyzes systematically the ability of using each strategy. RTC is made of seven types of print-picture pairs, i.e., a print (either a word or a nonword) associated with a picture. The task is to circle correct print-picture pairs and to cross out incorrect ones. The former consist of either regularly-spelled words or irregularly-spelled words associated with their corresponding pictures. The latter consist of either words associated with unrelated pictures, or nonwords nonwords that look similar to words, nonwords that sound similar to words, nonwords that neither sound nor look similar to words. Using RCT, this study analyzed reading strategies used by 13 dyslexic children and compared them to those used by 2196 1st-7th grade normolexic students. Results revealed that the difficulty presented by dyslexic children is eminently phonological: In word reading, dyslexic children performed equivalent to normolexic children, whereas in nonword reading, they performed significantly worse, especially for nonwords that look or sound similar to words. The study corroborated the notion that phonological processing is a major component of alphabetical reading and spelling, and that phonological processing disorders are mainly responsible for the specific reading difficulties that characterize developmental dyslexia.

Exploring the reading–writing connection in Chinese children with dyslexia in Hong Kong

Comparing the analyses based on the data of 1,235 Chinese children referred for government services and subsequently diagnosed as children with dyslexia in Hong Kong and those of 690 Chinese children in the sample for the normative study of the Hong Kong Test of Specific Learning Difficulties in Reading and Writing, we explored the reading–writing connection through a series of regression and correlation analyses. Specifically, orthographic knowledge, naming speed, and phonological memory were found to be salient predictors predicting both reading and writing, and when they were controlled and partialed out, the correlations between reading and writing were sizably attenuated, suggesting that these cognitive abilities or skills could act as third-variables contributing to the relationship between reading and writing. Issues related to causal inference, directionality of causality, and implications of the findings for intervention efforts and future research are discussed.

Editorial

Molecular genetics is an area that is currently progressing rapidly. It is now clear that almost every aspect of human behavioural development is genetically influenced, and the hunt is on to find, replicate and understand the function of the relevant genes. However, although most child psychology and psychiatry professionals recognise the role of genetic influences on the traits and disorders they work with, the field is one entrenched in language and indeed statistics of its own. This makes it a particularly hard area for those not working in it to dip into. Furthermore, it may not always be obvious how the findings of molecular genetics are relevant to other areas of research and to practitioners. For this reason, we decided the time was right to bring together a series of papers using current methodologies to examine genetic influence on aspects of child psychology and psychiatry, and to attempt to show in each how these findings are relevant to the broader field. The commentary by Robert Plomin provides an authoritative overview of where the field currently stands, including a summary of the papers in the section, and describes exciting developments that should help pave the way in the future. This is followed by two introductory guides covering the language and statistics of molecular genetics. The seven empirical papers cover a wide range of phenotypes, including ADHD, reading disability, speech and language disorder, genetic cognitive ability and Prader-Willi syndrome. The methods used also range considerably, reflecting the variety of approaches available. Some are as simple as a case–control design, making it easier to see how this type of information may in future be incorporated into ongoing non-genetic studies. The four remaining papers in this issue include one on learning disabilities, one on visual attention in deaf and hearing infants, one on self-perception of psychiatric problems, and one on a Chinese version of a diagnostic interview. The study by Eisenmajer and colleagues examines the important question of overlap between specific language impairment and specific reading difficulties. The study identified three groups of children, those with just one or other of these problems, and those with both. The latter group performed more poorly in general on both academic and phonological processing tasks, raising the possibility that this should be considered as a distinct third group. The study by Harris and Chasin highlights the importance of engaging the attention of deaf children through differing means to those used in hearing children. Deaf mothers of deaf children were most adept at using a wide variety of techniques to attract their child's attention. The findings suggest that hearing mothers of deaf children may benefit from support early on to help them assist their children develop good communication skills. Sourander and colleagues examined the links between early self-, parent- and teacher-reported emotional and behavioural symptoms and subsequent recognition of psychiatric problems and psychiatric diagnoses 10 years later in a sample of Finnish males. Of those with psychiatric problems, almost three-quarters recognised that they had either mild, definite or severe problems. However, only a minority were recognised by the health services as having a psychiatric disorder. The strongest predictor of psychiatric disorder was parent- and teacher-reported perceived need for treatment at age 8 years, suggesting that early school-based screening could be useful. Despite the huge youth population in China, little is known about psychiatric morbidity in this community. One obstacle to progress in this area has been the lack of validated psychiatric instruments. The study by Ho and others sets out to address this need by examining test–retest reliability of a Chinese version of the DISC-IV, producing findings similar to those from the original English version. I hope that you will enjoy this issue and that the special section on molecular genetics will prove both informative and engaging!

A 77-Kilobase Region of Chromosome 6p22.2 Is Associated with Dyslexia in Families From the United Kingdom and From the United States

Several quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that influence developmental dyslexia (reading disability [RD]) have been mapped to chromosome regions by linkage analysis. The most consistently replicated area of linkage is on chromosome 6p23-21.3. We used association analysis in 223 siblings from the United Kingdom to identify an underlying QTL on 6p22.2. Our association study implicates a 77-kb region spanning the gene TTRAP and the first four exons of the neighboring uncharacterized gene KIAA0319. The region of association is also directly upstream of a third gene, THEM2. We found evidence of these associations in a second sample of siblings from the United Kingdom, as well as in an independent sample of twin-based sibships from Colorado. One main RD risk haplotype that has a frequency of approximately 12% was found in both the U.K. and U.S. samples. The haplotype is not distinguished by any protein-coding polymorphisms, and, therefore, the functional variation may relate to gene expression. The QTL influences a broad range of reading-related cognitive abilities but has no significant impact on general cognitive performance in these samples. In addition, the QTL effect may be largely limited to the severe range of reading disability.

A candidate gene for developmental dyslexia encodes a nuclear tetratricopeptide repeat domain protein dynamically regulated in brain.

Approximately 3-10% of people have specific difficulties in reading, despite adequate intelligence, education, and social environment. We report here the characterization of a gene, DYX1C1 near the DYX1 locus in chromosome 15q21, that is disrupted by a translocation t(2;15)(q11;q21) segregating coincidentally with dyslexia. Two sequence changes in DYX1C1, one involving the translation initiation sequence and an Elk-1 transcription factor binding site (-3G --> A) and a codon (1249G --> T), introducing a premature stop codon and truncating the predicted protein by 4 aa, associate alone and in combination with dyslexia. DYX1C1 encodes a 420-aa protein with three tetratricopeptide repeat (TPR) domains, thought to be protein interaction modules, but otherwise with no homology to known proteins. The mouse Dyx1c1 protein is 78% identical to the human protein, and the nonhuman primates differ at 0.5-1.4% of residues. DYX1C1 is expressed in several tissues, including the brain, and the protein resides in the nucleus. In human brain, DYX1C1 protein localizes to a fraction of cortical neurons and white matter glial cells. We conclude that DYX1C1 should be regarded as a candidate gene for developmental dyslexia. Detailed study of its function may open a path to understanding a complex process of development and maturation of the human brain.