The Role of Learning Difficulties in Adolescents' Academic Emotions and Academic Achievement.

The present study examines associations between learning difficulties (LD), academic emotions, and academic achievement among 845 Grade 6 adolescents (455 girls, 390 boys). Reading difficulties (RD) and math difficulties (MD) were identified based on tested reading and math skills in the fall semester of Grade 6. At this time, the students also rated their hope, enjoyment, and anxiety regarding literacy and math. Information on students' achievement in literacy and math, as well as their overall academic achievement, was gathered using questionnaires in both the fall and spring semesters of Grade 6. The results show, first, that students with RD had lower hope and higher anxiety toward reading than those without RD. Also, students with MD reported lower enjoyment, lower hope, and higher anxiety than those without MD. Furthermore, the results show that hope partly played a mediating role between LD and academic achievement in both the literacy and math domains. In addition, enjoyment played a mediating role in the math domain. The present study's results indicate that subject-specific academic emotions should be taken into account when considering relations between LD and academic achievement.

Resolving reading disability-Childhood predictors and adult-age outcomes.

We examined frequency of adult-age reading disability (RD) and its childhood predictors among 48 adults (20 to 39 years) with documented childhood RD, and contrasted their cognitive skills, education, and employment with 37 matched controls. Among individuals with childhood RD, more than half had improved in their reading fluency to the level where the set criterion for adult-age RD was not met anymore. More fluent rapid naming, less severe childhood RD, and multiple support providers in childhood together predicted improvement of reading fluency. More fluent naming differentiated the childhood RD participants whose reading fluency had improved by adult-age from those participants whose RD persisted to adult-age. All the individuals with childhood RD performed weaker than the controls in adult-age working memory, processing speed, and verbal skills. Educational level among both RD groups was lower than that among the controls. Unemployment of individuals with persistent adult-age RD (31.6%) was higher than that of individuals with improved adult-age RD (13.8%) or that of the controls (8.1%). According to our findings, rapid naming is one evident factor differentiating individuals with persisted RD from those with ameliorated reading fluency. Also, better adult-age reading fluency has significance for adult-age employment among individuals with childhood RD.

Reducing Stress and Enhancing Academic Buoyancy among Adolescents Using a Brief Web-based Program Based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Acceptance and commitment therapy programs have rarely been used as preventive tools for alleviating stress and enhancing coping skills among adolescents. This randomized controlled trial examined the efficacy of a novel Finnish web- and mobile-delivered five-week intervention program called Youth COMPASS among a general sample of ninth-grade adolescents (n= 249, 49% females). The intervention group showed a small but significant decrease in overall stress (between-group Cohen's d = 0.22) and an increase in academic buoyancy (d= 0.27). Academic skills did not influence the intervention gains, but the intervention gains were largest among high-stressed participants. The results suggest that the acceptance and commitment based Youth COMPASS program may be well suited for promoting adolescents' well-being in the school context.

Newborn brain event-related potentials revealing atypical processing of sound frequency and the subsequent association with later literacy skills in children with familial dyslexia.

The role played by an auditory-processing deficit in dyslexia has been debated for several decades. In a longitudinal study using brain event-related potentials (ERPs) we investigated 1) whether dyslexic children with familial risk background would show atypical pitch processing from birth and 2) how these newborn ERPs later relate to these same children's pre-reading cognitive skills and literacy outcomes. Auditory ERPs were measured at birth for tones varying in pitch and presented in an oddball paradigm (1100 Hz, 12%, and 1000 Hz, 88%). The brain responses of the typically reading control group children (TRC group, N=25) showed clear differentiation between the frequencies, while those of the group of reading disability with familial risk (RDFR, 8 children) and the group of typical readers with familial risk (TRFR, 14 children) did not differentiate between the tones. The ERPs of the latter two groups differed from those of the TRC group. However, the two risk groups also showed a differential hemispheric ERP pattern. Furthermore, newborn ERPs reflecting passive change detection were associated with phonological skills and letter knowledge prior to school age and with phoneme duration perception, reading speed (RS) and spelling accuracy in the 2nd grade of school. The early obligatory response was associated with more general pre-school language skills, as well as with RS and reading accuracy (RA). Results suggest that a proportion of dyslexic readers with familial risk background are affected by atypical auditory processing. This is already present at birth and also relates to pre-reading phonological processing and speech perception. These early differences in auditory processing could later affect phonological representations and reading development. However, atypical auditory processing is unlikely to suffice as a sole explanation for dyslexia but rather as one risk factor, dependent on the genetic profile of the child.

Newborn event-related potentials predict poorer pre-reading skills in children at risk for dyslexia.

Earlier results from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia showed that newborn event-related potentials (ERPs) of children with and without familial risk for dyslexia were associated with receptive language and verbal memory skills between 2.5 and 5 years of age. We further examined whether these ERPs (responses to synthetic consonant-vowel syllables /ba/, /da/, /ga/; presented equiprobably with 3,910-7,285 ms interstimulus intervals) predict later pre-reading skills measured before the onset of school (6.5 years of age). In line with our earlier results, the at-risk children (N = 11) with atypical speech processing in the right hemisphere (a slower shift in polarity from positivity to negativity in responses to /ga/ at 540-630 ms) scored significantly lower in phonological skills, rapid naming, and letter knowledge than the control children (N = 10) without enhanced right hemispheric speech processing. These results further extend our earlier findings of newborn ERPs in predicting poorer language skills. These consistent differences in ERPs to speech sounds may have applications in the future for the early identification of children at risk for developmental language problems. This would facilitate well-directed intervention even before reading problems are typically diagnosed.

Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) measured at birth predict later language development in children with and without familial risk for dyslexia.

We report associations between brain event-related potentials (ERPs) measured from newborns with and without familial risk for dyslexia and these same children's later language and verbal memory skills at 2.5, 3.5, and 5 years of age. ERPs to synthetic consonant-vowel syllables (/ba/, /da/, /ga/; presented equiprobably with 3,910-7,285 msec interstimulus intervals) were recorded from 26 newborns at risk for familial dyslexia and 23 control infants participating in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The correlation and regression analyses showed that the at-risk type of response pattern at birth (a slower shift in polarity from positivity to negativity in responses to /ga/ at 540-630 msec) in the right hemisphere was related to significantly poorer receptive language skills across both groups at the age of 2.5 years. The similar ERP pattern in the left hemisphere was associated with poorer verbal memory skills at the age of 5 years. These results demonstrate that ERPs of newborns may be valid predictors of later language and neurocognitive outcomes.

Maturational effects on newborn ERPs measured in the mismatch negativity paradigm.

The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related potentials (ERPs), a measure of passive change detection, is suggested to develop early in comparison to other ERP components, and an MMN-like response has been measured even from preterm infants. The MMN response in adults is negative in polarity at about 150-200 ms. However, the response measured in a typical MMN paradigm can also be markedly different in newborns, even opposite in polarity. This has been suggested to be related to maturational factors. To verify that suggestion, we measured ERPs of 21 newborns during quiet sleep to rarely occurring deviant tones of 1100 Hz (probability 12%) embedded among repeated standard tones of 1000 Hz in an oddball sequence. Gestational age (GA) and two cardiac measures, vagal tone (V) and heart period (HP), were used as measures of maturation. GA and HP explained between 36% and 42% of the total variance of the individual ERP peak amplitude (the largest deflection of the difference wave at a time window of 150-375 ms) at different scalp locations. In the discriminant function analyses, GA and HP as classifying variables differentiated infants in whom the peak of the difference wave had positive polarity from those with a negative polarity at an accuracy level ranging from 72% to 91%. These results demonstrate that during quiet sleep, maturational factors explain a significant portion of the ERP difference wave amplitude in terms of its polarity, indicating that the more mature the ERPs are, the more positive the amplitude. The present study suggests that maturational effects should be taken into account in ERP measurements using MMN paradigms with young infants.

Brain responses to changes in speech sound durations differ between infants with and without familial risk for dyslexia.

A specific learning disability, developmental dyslexia, is a language-based disorder that is shown to be strongly familial. Therefore, infants born to families with a history of the disorder are at an elevated risk for the disorder. However, little is known of the potential early markers of dyslexia. Here we report differences between 6-month-old infants with and without high risk of familial dyslexia in brain electrical activation generated by changes in the temporal structure of speech sounds, a critical cueing feature in speech. We measured event-related brain responses to consonant duration changes embedded in ata pseudowords applying an oddball paradigm, in which pseudoword tokens with varying /t/ duration were presented as frequent standard (80%) or as rare deviant stimuli (each 10%) with an interval of 610 msec between the stimuli. The infants at risk differ from control infants in both their initial responsiveness to sounds per se and in their change-detection responses dependent on the stimulus context. These results show that infants at risk due to a familial background of reading problems process auditory temporal cues of speech sounds differently from infants without such a risk even before they learn to speak.