Early and late diagnosed dyslexia in secondary school: Performance on literacy skills and cognitive correlates

Abstract

Although a diagnosis of dyslexia is often made during elementary school, severe and persistent literacy difficulties of a considerable group of students are only noticed during secondary school. The question arises whether the literacy(‐related) deficits of these late identified students with dyslexia differ from those of early diagnosed students. To address this question, 10th Grade Dutch secondary school students with early ( n = 35) and late ( n = 19) identified dyslexia and their peers with average to good literacy abilities ( n = 24) were compared on literacy skills and underlying cognitive skills. At the group level, both students with an early and late diagnosis performed more poorly than their typical peers, but they did not differ from each other on (pseudo‐)word reading, spelling and underlying cognitive correlates (phonemic awareness, rapid automatized naming and visual attention span). The early and late group contained comparable percentages of students performing poorly on most measures. There were, however, more students in the early group who showed deficits in phonemic awareness. Our results indicate that students with early and late diagnosed dyslexia are highly comparable. Suggestions for fitting interventions are discussed.

Text Reading Fluency and Text Reading Comprehension Do Not Rely on the Same Abilities in University Students With and Without Dyslexia

“…Even though they used many different measures, Ransby and Swanson (2003) did not study the role of spelling skills when explaining TRF scores, although research on children and adolescent with dyslexia has shown a reciprocal relationship between decoding and visual word recognition skills, on the one hand, and spelling skills on the other ( Berninger et al, 2008 ; Bazen et al, 2020 ). Furthermore, the involvement of spelling skills in the reading of adults with dyslexia has been little studied, probably because research on this point has shown a persistent deficit in these skills.…”

The Same yet Different: Oral and Silent Reading in Children and Adolescents with Dyslexia

“…Similar to Gagliano et al we might expect the difference between oral and silent reading to be smaller in adolescents with dyslexia compared to typically developing peers, indicating a relatively strong impairment in silent as compared to oral reading. In contrast, based on findings of van den Boer et al ( 2014 ) on the stronger involvement of rapid naming in oral compared to silent reading, we might expect stronger deficits in oral as compared to silent reading, as rapid naming tends to be impaired in adolescents with dyslexia (e.g., Bazen et al, 2020 ; Torppa et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Although this measurement of reading fluency corresponds to the definition of dyslexia, it is at odds with daily experiences that more often require silent reading fluency, and reading of texts rather than words. This issue is especially relevant since dyslexia is a lifelong condition, and even though dyslexia is often diagnosed in elementary school, there are students who receive a diagnosis of dyslexia only later on in their school career, around Grade 7/8 or even later (e.g., Bazen et al, 2020 ; Torppa et al, 2015 ). At this (st)age, silent reading, text reading fluency, and comprehension of text are central to the school curriculum.…”

“…At this (st)age, silent reading, text reading fluency, and comprehension of text are central to the school curriculum. At that (st)age the role of linguistic comprehension in reading comprehension has been found to be larger than the role of decoding skills; accordingly, individuals with dyslexia are not necessarily impaired in reading comprehension (e.g., Bazen et al, 2020 ; García & Cain, 2014 ; Lonigan et al, 2018 ). Nevertheless, text reading fluency has been found to predict reading comprehension after controlling for decoding and linguistic comprehension (Kershaw & Schatschneider, 2012 ).…”

What Is Going on with Visual Attention in Reading and Dyslexia? A Critical Review of Recent Studies

“…Using Dutch 10th-graders (mean age: 16.5 years) who had an early or late diagnosis of dyslexia and PA, RAN, and VAS tasks, Bazen et al [ 25 ] also examined the extent to which dyslexics had particular disorders. They found 31% of their sample had a VAS weakness and 63% and 60% had RAN and PA weaknesses, respectively.…”