Predicting Dyslexia From Kindergarten: The Importance of Distinctness of Phonological Representations of Lexical Items

Abstract

S This article presents results from a longitudinal study of children of dyslexic and of normally reading parents. The children were followed from the beginning of kindergarten (at the age of 6, 1 year before reading instruction in Denmark) until the beginning of the second grade. Children of dyslexic parents were found to have an increased risk of dyslexia (a 4.3 odds ratio) when dyslexia was defined as poor phonological recoding (poor reading of nonwords and pseudohomophones of real words). All language measures in kindergarten were statistically significant predictors of dyslexia. Logistic regression analyses with backwards stepwise selection indicated that three measures contributed independently to the prediction of dyslexia: letter naming, phoneme identification, and distinctness of phonological representations. The measure of distinctness of phonological representations also contributed significantly to the prediction of poor phoneme awareness in Grade 2—even when differences in early syllable and phoneme awareness, articulation, and productive and receptive vocabulary were accounted for. The results suggest that the quality of phonological representations in the mental lexicon is a determinant of the development of both segmental (e.g., phoneme) awareness and of the acquisition of phonological recoding skills in reading. ESTE TRABAJO presenta los resultados de un estudio longitudinal de niños hijos de padres disléxicos y normales. El seguimiento de los niños se produjo desde el comienzo del preescolar (a la edad de seis años, un año antes de comenzar la enseñanza de la lectura en Dinamarca), hasta el comienzo de segundo grado. Se halló que entre los hijos de padres disléxicos aumentaba el riesgo de dislexia (a razón del 4.3) cuando se definía la dislexia como problemas de recodificación fonológica (problemas para leer pseudo‐palabras y pseudo‐homófonos de palabras reales). Todas las medidas de lenguaje tomadas en preescolar fueron predictoras de dislexia estadísticamente significativas. Los análisis de regresión logística con selección por pasos indicaron que las tres medidas contribuían independientemente a la predicción de la dislexia: nombrar letras, identificar fonemas y la precisión de las representaciones fonológicas. La medida de precisión de las representaciones fonológicas también contribuyó significativamente a predecir problemas de conciencia fonológica en segundo grado ‐ aún cuando se tomaron en cuenta las diferencias en conciencia silábica y fonológica tempranas. Los resultados sugieren que la calidad de las representaciones fonológicas en el léxico mental es determinante tanto del desarrollo de la conciencia segmental (por ej., fonológica) como de la adquisición de habilidades fonológicas en la lectura. DIESER ARTIKEL stellt die Ergebnisse einer Langzeitstudie mit Kindern von dyslexischen und normal‐lesenden Eltern vor. Die Kinder wurden mit Beginn des Kindergartens (im Alter von sechs, ein Jahr vor Beginn des Leseunterrichts in Dänemark) bis zum Eintritt in das zweite Schuljahr betr...

Auditory word identification in dyslexic and normally achieving readers

“…More important, because of the nature of how listeners represent and process coarticulation, poorer performance by dyslexics on this task implies that their phonological representations for common words are less well integrated than those of normally achieving readers. This finding extends previous results obtained with gating tasks in dyslexic samples (Boada & Pennington, 2006;Griffiths & Snowling, 2001;Metsala, 1997b) and supports the growing literature suggesting that dyslexics have less complete phonological representations of printed words (Elbro et al, 1998;Swan & Goswami, 1997;Wesseling & Reitsma, 2001).…”

“…A problem with this approach is that phonological awareness at the level of the phoneme appears not to develop actively until the onset of reading instruction, and it may be heavily influenced by the individual's experience with printed words in alphabetic languages (Morais, Cary, Alegria, & Bertelson, 1979;Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1987;Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Others have argued that poor performance on phonological awareness tasks may reflect incomplete or inaccurate phonological representations rather than analytic problems per se (Boada & Pennington, 2006;Elbro, Borstrom, & Petersen, 1998;Fowler, 1991;Snowling & Hulme, 1989;Swan & Goswami, 1997). We term this broad view the phonological representations hypothesis (after Swan & Goswami, 1997).…”

Phonological development in relation to native language and literacy: Variations on a theme in six alphabetic orthographies

“…In yet other studies, facility at recognising spoken words from sparse neighbourhoods emerged as a predictor (Garlock et al, 2001;Metsala et al, 2009). Although this latter finding does not appear consistent with LR predictions, it could be that this measure acts as an index of the quality of the underlying speech representations that may underpin both vocabulary acquisition and phonological awareness (e.g., Boada & Pennington, 2006;Elbro et al, 1998). …”

“…While receptive vocabulary is a strong correlate of phonological awareness in some studies (McBride-Chang, Wagner, & Chang, 1997;Metsala, 1999), others have failed to find such a relationship (Elbro, Borstrom, & Petersen, 1998;Garlock, Walley, & Metsala, 2001). In yet other studies, facility at recognising spoken words from sparse neighbourhoods emerged as a predictor (Garlock et al, 2001;Metsala et al, 2009).…”

The Home Literacy Environment Is a Correlate, but Perhaps Not a Cause, of Variations in Children’s Language and Literacy Development

“…Parents of children with language difficulties may also adjust their linguistic input during home literacy activities in line with their children’s productive skills (Majorano & Lavelli, 2014). In contrast, studies to date have reported minimal differences in the frequency and quality of literacy activities provided by parents who are dyslexic readers in comparison with typical readers (Elbro, Borstrøm, & Petersen, 1998; Laakso, Poikkeus, & Lyytinen, 1999; Van Bergen, Jong, Plakas, Maassen, & Leij, 2011), and the limited literature has not taken into account the reading skills of parents themselves.…”