ABSTRACT
The study concerns reading development and its precursors in a transparent orthography. Dutch children differing in family risk for dyslexia were followed from kindergarten through fifth grade. In fifth grade, at-risk dyslexic (n = 22), at-risk non-dyslexic (n = 45), and control children (n = 12) were distinguished. In kindergarten, the at-risk non-dyslexics performed better than the at-risk dyslexics, but worse than the controls on letter-knowledge and rapid naming. The groups did not differ on phonological awareness. At-risk dyslexics read less fluently from first grade onwards than the other groups. At-risk non-dyslexics' reading fluency was at an intermediate position between the other groups at the start of reading. By fifth grade they had reached a similar level as the controls on word reading, but still lagged behind on pseudoword reading. Results further showed that the parents of the groups of at-risk children differed in educational level and reading skills. Overall, the groups of at-risk children differed on pre-reading skills as well as on reading development. These differences do not seem to stem from differences in intellectual abilities or literacy environment. Instead, the better reading skills of parents of at-risk non-dyslexics suggest that these children might have a lower genetic liability.
Subject(s)
Dyslexia/genetics , Family Health , Parents , Reading , Analysis of Variance , Awareness/physiology , Child , Child, Preschool , Dyslexia/epidemiology , Environment , Female , Humans , Intelligence , Male , Netherlands/epidemiology , Neuropsychological Tests , Parent-Child Relations , PhoneticsABSTRACT
Children (5 and 6 years old, n = 30) at familial risk of dyslexia received a home-based intervention that focused on phoneme awareness and letter knowledge in the year prior to formal reading instruction. The children were compared to a no-training at-risk control group (n = 27), which was selected a year earlier. After training, we found a small effect on a composite score of phoneme awareness (d = 0.29) and a large effect on receptive letter knowledge (d = 0.88). In first grade, however, this did not result in beneficial effects for the experimental group in word reading and spelling. Results are compared to three former intervention studies in The Netherlands and comparable studies from Denmark and Australia.
Subject(s)
Dyslexia/genetics , Dyslexia/rehabilitation , Language Therapy , Reading , Child , Child, Preschool , Computer Literacy , Dyslexia/epidemiology , Family Health , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Genetic Predisposition to Disease , Humans , Male , Mental Recall , Netherlands/epidemiology , Parents , Phonetics , Risk FactorsABSTRACT
Dutch children at higher familial risk of reading disability received a home-based intervention programme before formal reading instruction started to investigate whether this would reduce the risk of dyslexia. The experimental group (n=23) received a specific training in phoneme awareness and letter knowledge. A control group (n=25) received a non-specific training in morphology, syntax, and vocabulary. Both interventions were designed to take 10 min a day, 5 days a week for 10 weeks. Most parents were sufficiently able to work with the programme properly. At post-test the experimental group had gained more on phoneme awareness than the control group. The control group gained more on one of the morphology measures. On average, these specific training results did not lead to significant group differences in first-grade reading and spelling measures. However, fewer experimental children scored below 10th percentile on word recognition.
Subject(s)
Dyslexia/genetics , Dyslexia/rehabilitation , Genetic Predisposition to Disease , Home Care Services , Language Therapy , Child , Child, Preschool , Humans , Language , Netherlands , Pattern Recognition, Visual , ReadingABSTRACT
Treatment integrity is an underexposed issue in the phonological awareness intervention research. The current study assessed the integrity of treatment of the families (N = 32) participating in the experimental condition of a home-based pre-reading intervention study. The participating kindergartners were all genetically at risk for developing dyslexia. Two aspects of treatment integrity, the number of lessons completed (quantity) and the quality of the administration of the programme (observed in a videotaped session), were investigated. The level of treatment integrity turned out to be 66% when completion of all lessons was taken as quantitative criterion, and about 74% when quality of the parent-child interaction was assessed. The two measures could predict the pre-reading skills at the end of kindergarten. Together they accounted for 43% of the variance in this dependent variable. Together with pre-reading scores at the pre-test the total predicted variance was 87%. The number of lessons completed still contributed 12% to the prediction after controlling for pre-test scores. The results indicated that treatment integrity indeed appears to be an important aspect of treatment outcome and should therefore be included in intervention studies.
