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At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
PubMed2003

Early phonological awareness and reading skills in children with Down syndrome.

Increasingly, children with Down syndrome receive literacy instruction with the expectation of acquiring functional reading skills. Unfortunately, little is known about the processes underlying literacy skills in this special population. Phonological awareness contributes to literacy development in typically developing children, however, there is inconclusive evidence about these skills in younger children with Down syndrome. 9 children with Down syndrome (5.6-8.10 years) participated in this investigation. Due to the paucity of standardised phonological awareness measures for children with special needs, in particular children with Down syndrome, a variety of tasks were adapted from the literature. The assessment battery examined the skills of phonological awareness, literacy, speech production, expressive language, hearing acuity, speech perception, and auditory-visual memory. The results suggest that children with Down syndrome are at risks for reading acquisition difficulties due to reduced phonological awareness skills. These deficits are in addition to delays caused by reduced cognitive skills. Only one of the participants was able to demonstrate rhyme awareness, which may have been due to task effects. Written word recognition ability was correlated with tests of phonemic awareness, and error analysis of the spelling and non-word reading tasks suggested grapheme-phoneme connections deficits. Further research is needed to determine the best methods of assessment and intervention for phonological awareness in children with Down syndrome.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2002

Orthographic learning during reading: examining the role of self-teaching.

Thirty-four second grade children read target homophonic pseudowords (e.g., slurst/slirst) in the context of real stories in a test of the self-teaching theory of early reading acquisition. The degree of orthographic learning was assessed with three converging tasks: homophonic choice, spelling, and target naming. Each of the tasks indicated that orthographic learning had taken place because processing of target homophones (e.g., yait) was superior to that of their homophonic controls (e.g., yate). Consistent with the self-teaching hypothesis, we obtained a substantial correlation (r=.52) between orthographic learning and the number of target homophones correctly decoded during story reading. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that neither RAN tasks nor general cognitive ability predicted variance in orthographic learning once the number of target homophones correctly decoded during story reading had been partialed out. In contrast, a measure of orthographic knowledge predicted variance in orthographic learning once the number of targets correctly decoded had been partialed. The development of orthographic knowledge appears to be not entirely parasitic on decoding ability. (c) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Processing of rapid auditory stimuli in school-age children referred for evaluation of learning disorders.

Tallal hypothesized that reading disabled children have a domain-general deficit in processing rapidly occurring auditory stimuli that degrades speech perception, thereby limiting phonologic awareness and thus reading acquisition. She predicted they would be disproportionately affected by rapidly presented auditory stimuli. In this study, one hundred 7- to 11-year-old children with learning impairment (LI) and 243 non-learning impaired (NLI) children were evaluated on a two-tone auditory discrimination paradigm. LI committed more errors, but effects of timing were comparable. The same result was obtained for a subsample of good and poor readers. Task performance predicted reading, spelling, and calculation. Neural processes underlying perception of speech and other auditory stimuli may be less effective in poor readers; however, contrary to Tallal's hypothesis, rate may not be specifically affected.

Achievement↗
PubMed1998

Why is learning to read a hard task for some children?

In this brief review of some of my research on reading disability, I argue that a child's development into literacy has two major ontogenetic roots, one involving early informal literacy socialization and one related to phonological awareness. Although failure in reading acquisition might be a question of cultural deprivation, the dynamic interaction between genetic dispositions and environment must be acknowledged, especially in a society providing rich sources of print exposure. The crucial transition in literacy development involves a step from implicit to explicit control of the phonemic units of language. When the cipher of the alphabetic system is understood the child is equipped with a powerful instrument for self teaching. A primary source of reading disability is then related to problems of segmenting the speech stream into phonemic units. The poor functioning of the phonological module seems to be a circumscribed deficit not related to general cognitive ability. The causal and reciprocal relationship between phonological awareness and learning to read has been demonstrated in my research over 20 years. Some of these studies are briefly reviewed in this article. The preventive and remedial implications of the findings are rather obvious.

Awareness↗
PubMed2006

The role of learning to read in the development of problem behaviour: a cross-lagged longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: This study investigates the posited relationship between learning to read, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviours, during the transition from preschool to primary school. METHODS: A total of 196 (104 boys, 92 girls) children participating in the Jyväskylä Entrance into Primary School (JEPS) study were followed up six times during their transition from preschool to primary school. At each measurement, the children's reading performance was tested. Moreover, their internalizing and externalizing problem behaviour was examined by means of structured interviews. RESULTS: The results showed that problems in reading acquisition predicted an increase in internalizing problem behaviour during the preschool year and first grade, whereas during the second grade they were associated with an increase in subsequent externalizing problem behaviour. Moreover, from preschool to the beginning of the primary school internalizing problem behaviour predicted subsequent externalizing problem behaviour. Later on during the first and the second primary school years, it was externalizing problem behaviour that predicted an increase in internalizing problem behaviour. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggested that difficulties in learning to read, and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviours are developmentally linked in a cumulative manner.

Child↗
PubMed2005

Phoneme manipulation not onset-rime manipulation ability is a unique predictor of early reading.

BACKGROUND: Phonological awareness is known to be an excellent predictor of later reading acquisition. It remains unclear, however, whether phoneme manipulation alone best explains this association or whether an additional direct contribution of onset-rime awareness is predictive. This issue is explored here. METHOD: A longitudinal study is reported predicting national test and teacher-assessed performance of 351 children aged 7 from phonological awareness measures, pupil baseline attainment and background measures at age 5. RESULTS: Explicit phoneme manipulation skills at age 5 correlated most strongly with literacy skills at age 5. Phoneme manipulation at age 5 predicted all four reading measures taken at age 7 after pupil background, baseline data and onset-rime awareness were controlled in regression analyses. Onset-rime manipulation did not predict reading at 7 in parallel analyses. After controlling for initial reading at age 5, phoneme manipulation still predicted reading comprehension, and teacher-assessed reading and writing at age 7. CONCLUSIONS: Results support the existence of a route from phoneme manipulation, but not an additional direct route from explicit onset-rime manipulation at 5, to reading at 7. Practically, findings show that professionals can augment baseline and pupil background data with phoneme manipulation screening in the early identification of learning needs.

Aptitude↗
PubMed2002

Contributions of magnetic source imaging to the understanding of dyslexia.

The problem in dyslexia is difficulty learning how the printed word maps onto spoken language. Magnetic Source Imaging protocols were used in three studies. The first study with dyslexic children showed greater activity in the right temporoparietal region. The second study showed the aberrant neural circuit was present in initial stages of reading acquisition. The third study demonstrated that the aberrant profile could be normalized following intensive instruction. These findings suggest that dyslexia represents a functional deficit in the neural circuit that mediates the conversion of print to sound, which is amenable to change given adequate instruction.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Structure of preschool phonological sensitivity: overlapping sensitivity to rhyme, words, syllables, and phonemes.

Phonological sensitivity is an important causal variable in reading acquisition; however, there is controversy concerning its nature. One view holds that sensitivity to various linguistic units reflects independent abilities, whereas another holds sensitivity to these units reflects one ability. We examined relations among sensitivity to words, syllables, rhymes, and phonemes in 149 older preschool children (4- and 5-year-olds) and 109 younger preschool children (2- and 3-year-olds) who completed eight measures of phonological sensitivity and measures of print knowledge. Confirmatory factor analyses of all combinations of word, syllable, rhyme, and phoneme factors found that a one-factor model best explained the data from both groups of children (CFIs >.98). Only variance common to all phonological sensitivity skills was related to print knowledge and rudimentary decoding. Findings support a developmental conceptualization of phonological sensitivity.

Awareness↗
PubMed1997

The differential effect of storybook reading on preschoolers' acquisition of expressive and receptive vocabulary.

The present study was conducted to assess the effect of didactic techniques used during storybook reading on young children's acquisition of new vocabulary introduced in storybooks. Thirty children for each group of three- and four-year-old children were read one storybook individually. The study included three storybook reading conditions: single-reading, repeated-reading and questioning. In both the repeated-reading and the questioning conditions, the storybook was read three times. Children in the questioning condition were asked, during each reading of the storybook, to label target items with the novel words. Listening to multiple readings of a storybook facilitated children's acquisition of expressive and receptive vocabulary, whereas answering questions during the multiple readings was more helpful to the acquisition of expressive than receptive vocabulary. These findings suggest that, under certain conditions, didactic techniques used by adults have differential effects on preschoolers' receptive and expressive vocabulary.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed2004

The cognitive deficits responsible for developmental dyslexia: review of evidence for a selective visual attentional disorder.

There is strong converging evidence suggesting that developmental dyslexia stems from a phonological processing deficit. However, this hypothesis has been challenged by the widely admitted heterogeneity of the dyslexic population, and by several reports of dyslexic individuals with no apparent phonological deficit. In this paper, we discuss the hypothesis that a phonological deficit may not be the only core deficit in developmental dyslexia and critically examine several alternative proposals. To establish that a given cognitive deficit is causally related to dyslexia, at least two conditions need to be fulfilled. First, the hypothesized deficit needs to be associated with developmental dyslexia independently of additional phonological deficits. Second, the hypothesized deficit must predict reading ability, on both empirical and theoretical grounds. While most current hypotheses fail to fulfil these criteria, we argue that the visual attentional deficit hypothesis does. Recent studies providing evidence for the independence of phonological and visual attentional deficits in developmental dyslexia are reviewed together with empirical data showing that phonological and visual attentional processing skills contribute independently to reading performance. A theoretical model of reading is outlined in support of a causal link between a visual attentional disorder and a failure in reading acquisition.

Attention↗
PubMed1994

Dichotic listening performance under high and low lexical work load in subtypes of developmental dyslexia.

This study examined dichotic listening performance in different subtypes of developmental dyslexia under high and low verbal work load conditions. Free recall tests of digits and words were administered to 320 dyslexic children from grade 3 to grade 10 and their matched controls. Results indicate significant differences within subtypes. Surface dyslexics manifested extreme ear neglect or total performance collapse but only under high verbal work load conditions. Phonological dyslexia was distinguished by poor total performance both under high and low work load levels. Visuo-motor dyslexics, however, did not differ in any measure from their controls. These results lend support to the contention that the main neuropsychological factor impeding reading acquisition varies according to dyslexia subtype.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Why theories about developmental dyslexia require developmental designs.

This article examines the importance of developmental designs in dyslexia research using a neuroconstructivist framework. According to neuroconstructivism, the lowest level of impairment should be identified as early as possible, and developmental effects on higher-level cognition examined longitudinally. A number of recent studies proposing candidate low-level impairments have not used such developmental designs. The role of normal variation in postulated causal factors on development is ignored, inadequate control groups are used, and the nature and timing of environmental inputs are not measured, even though reading is taught systematically and both reading acquisition and dyslexia vary with orthography. It is suggested here that only a phonological deficit arising from low-level auditory processing problems meets the criteria for a neuroconstructivist approach.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2000

Severe cognitive impairment in DMD: obvious clinical indication for Dp71 isoform point mutation screening.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy is associated with variable degrees of selective cognitive defect with lower scores for verbal intelligence and reading abilities. A number of findings have shown that rearrangements located in the second part of the gene seem to be preferentially associated with cognitive impairment. Several dystrophin transcripts are expressed in the brain. The more distal of them, Dp71, is predominant. We have carried out a mutational analysis of Dp71 transcript in 12 DMD patients severely, mildly or not retarded, all without detectable deletion or duplication. We have detected five point mutations causing Dp71 premature translation termination. All were found among the more severely mentally retarded patients of this group (VIQ < 50 and/or no reading acquisition).

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades?

We summarize some of the most important findings from research evaluating the hypothesized causes of specific reading disability ('dyslexia') over the past four decades. After outlining components of reading ability, we discuss manifest causes of reading difficulties, in terms of deficiencies in component reading skills that might lead to such difficulties. The evidence suggests that inadequate facility in word identification due, in most cases, to more basic deficits in alphabetic coding is the basic cause of difficulties in learning to read. We next discuss hypothesized deficiencies in reading-related cognitive abilities as underlying causes of deficiencies in component reading skills. The evidence in these areas suggests that, in most cases, phonological skills deficiencies associated with phonological coding deficits are the probable causes of the disorder rather than visual, semantic, or syntactic deficits, although reading difficulties in some children may be associated with general language deficits. Hypothesized deficits in general learning abilities (e.g., attention, association learning, cross-modal transfer etc.) and low-level sensory deficits have weak validity as causal factors in specific reading disability. These inferences are, by and large, supported by research evaluating the biological foundations of dyslexia. Finally, evidence is presented in support of the idea that many poor readers are impaired because of inadequate instruction or other experiential factors. This does not mean that biological factors are not relevant, because the brain and environment interact to produce the neural networks that support reading acquisition. We conclude with a discussion of the clinical implications of the research findings, focusing on the need for enhanced instruction.

Brain↗
PubMed1983

Specific reading retardation and working memory: a review.

Research into the memory deficit of retarded readers is examined within a working memory framework. Although much of the evidence in this area is confusing, there is fairly consistent evidence that reading retardation can be associated with a deficit in long-term storage of phonological information. This deficit may affect retarded readers' ability to utilize the articulatory loop, a short-term store which appears to play an important role in certain aspects of normal reading acquisition. On the other hand, there is fairly consistent evidence that retarded readers perform normally at storing non-verbal information and the semantic aspects of verbal information in long-term memory. Problems with current research strategies are discussed and suggestions for future research directions are made.

Attention↗
PubMed2001

The sensory basis of reading problems.

Learning to read is much more difficult than learning to speak. Most children teach themselves to speak with little or no difficulty. Yet a few years later when they come to learn to read they have to be taught how to do it; they do not pick up reading by themselves. This is because we speak in words and syllables, but we write in phonemes. Syllables do not naturally break down into the sounds of letters and letter units (i.e., phonemes) because these do not correspond to physiologically distinct articulatory gestures (Liberman, Shankweiler, & Studdert-Kennedy, 1967). Alphabetic writing was only invented when people realized that syllables could be artificially divided into smaller acoustically distinguishable phonemes that could be represented by a small number of letters. But these distinctions are arbitrary cultural artifacts, and their mastery was originally confined to a select social class. And until about 100 years ago it did not matter much if the majority of people could not read; the acquisition of reading probably had no serious disadvantages. Reading requires the integration of at least two kinds of analysis (Castles & Coltheart, 1993; Ellis, 1984; Manis, Seidenberg, Doi, McBride-Chang, & Petersen, 1996; Morton, 1969; Seidenburg, 1993). First, the visual form of words, the shape of letters, their order in words, and common spelling patterns, which is termed their orthography, has to be processed visually. Their orthography yields the meaning of familiar words very rapidly without needing to sound them out. But for unfamiliar words, and all words are fairly unfamiliar to the beginning reader, the letters have to be translated into the speech sounds (i.e., phonemes) that they stand for, and then those sounds have to be melded together in inner speech to yield the word and its meaning. Reading exclusively by the phonological route is more time consuming than if words can be accessed directly without requiring phonological mediation.

Auditory Pathways↗
PubMed2000

Precursors of literacy delay among children at genetic risk of dyslexia.

This paper reports the literacy skills of 63 children selected as being at genetic risk of dyslexia compared with 34 children from families reporting no history of reading impairment. Fifty-seven per cent of the at-risk group were delayed in literacy development at 6 years compared with only 12% of controls. The "unimpaired" at-risk group were not statistically different from controls on most cognitive and language measures at 45 months, whereas the literacy-delayed group showed significantly slower speech and language development, although they did not differ from controls in nonverbal ability. Letter knowledge at 45 months was the strongest predictor of literacy level at 6 years. In addition, early speech and language skills predicted individual differences in literacy outcome and genetic risk accounted for unique variance over and above these other factors. The results are discussed in terms of an interactive developmental model in which semantic and phonological skills support early reading acquisition.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[The use of Internet in occupational medicine and industrial hygiene].

The internet as we know is today includes an array of tools that make information exchange easier than ever before. The best known Internet tools are the World Wide Web and the electronic mail. In the present job we identify those that are the home pages that better can help Industrial Hygienists and Doctors to acquire useful information for the profession. From the detailed examination of the possibilities offered from Internet (web documents acquisition, reading on line of scientific papers, use of mailing lists and e-mail) we can wait in future that the this new instrument will play an important role by offering extensive knowledge and information in the field of occupational and environmental health.

Databases, Bibliographic↗