Intergenerational Transmission of Dyslexia: How do Different Identification Methods of Parental Difficulties Influence the Conclusions Regarding Children's Risk for Dyslexia?

Abstract

By investigating children whose parents have dyslexia, family risk (FR) studies are expanding our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of dyslexia. These studies, however, vary in their identification of FR, and how the use of different identification methods influences research findings and conclusions is yet to be systematically investigated. This study aims to evaluate the association between two FR identification methods—parental self‐reports and direct skill assessments—and their unique contributions in the prediction of children's reading. The study employed two datasets: a prospective FR sample (half of the parents in the sample had dyslexia and the remaining half did not) and an unselected sample. Parental self‐reports and direct skill assessments correlated strongly (.60) in the prospective FR sample and moderately (.42) in the unselected sample. Moreover, both FR identification methods were almost equally predictive of children's reading (explaining 5%–9% of the variance at different time points) in the prospective FR sample only. In the prediction of the children's skills, the two methods complemented each other only for some of the measures. At the same time, in the unselected sample, parental skills were not predictive of children's reading, whereas self‐reports were. The two FR identification methods seem to have equally high predictive power when the variability in parental data is high. However, they lose their predictive power when either the lower or higher end of the parental reading distribution is underrepresented.

Causal effect of parental reading on later development of children: Demonstrating a Bayesian approach

“…For example, Khanolainen et al (2022) showed that parental self-reported difficulties and parental reading skills predict a child's literacy skills at age 23 among the Finnish sample with potential family risk for dyslexia. Using the same sample, Torppa et al (2022) found that shared reading assessed at age 2 predicts vocabulary at ages 3-5 and reading comprehension among children at age 15 indirectly through enhanced motivation. Our results confirmed similar findings for a variety of outcomes on a larger sample under a simpler model with a Bayesian approach.…”

Dynamics of cognitive predictors during reading acquisition in a sample of children overrepresented for dyslexia risk

“…This is a feasible measure that more closely resembles reality compared to a categorical approach by approximating parents’ current and previous reading experiences. Additionally, studies have shown that the use of self‐report questionnaires in parents can be a valid reflection of their actual reading abilities (Bjornsdottir et al., 2014; Khanolainen et al., 2022; Lefly & Pennington, 2000; Vandermosten et al., 2017). Nevertheless, there are also some limitations related to the measure that deserve attention.…”

Developing and validating an abbreviated adult reading history questionnaire in the Finnish and Dutch contexts

“…The latter task took 3 min and included 60 items, in each of which the participant was instructed to verify the truthfulness of a simple sentence. The total score of children skills was the average of the two fluency tasks' z ‐scores (Cronbach's alpha for the composite = .87) (for more details about the task, see Khanolainen et al, 2022).…”