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...

Difficulties in reading and language skills which persist from childhood into adult life are the concerns of this article. The aims were twofold: (1) to find measures of adult reading processes that validate adults' retrospective reports of difficulties in learning to read during the school years, and (2) to search for indications of basic deficits in phonological processing that may point toward underlying causes of reading difficulties. Adults who reported a history of difficulties in learning to read (n=102) were distinctly disabled in phonological coding in reading, compared to adults without similar histories (n=56). They were less disabled in the comprehension of written passages, and the comprehension disability was explained by the phonological difficulties. A number of indications were found that adults with poor phonological coding skills in reading (i.e., dyslexia) have basic deficits in phonological representations of spoken words, even when semantic word knowledge, phonemic awareness, educational level, and daily reading habits are taken into account. It is suggested that dyslexics possess less distinct phonological representations of spoken words.

Positive long-term effects of phoneme awareness training in kindergarten were found in this study with children of dyslexic parents. Thirty-five at-risk children (attending 26 different classes) participated in an intensive 17-week program in their regular kindergarten classes designed to help them improve in phoneme awareness. Follow-up measures indicated that the trained children outperformed 47 untrained at-risk controls in both word and nonword reading in Grades 2, 3, and 7. For the very poorest readers, significant effects were found-even in Grade 7 reading comprehension. However, the trained at-risk children were found to lag behind a 2nd control group of 41 not-at-risk children in most aspects of reading. Treatment-resistant children had relatively poor phonological representations of known words.

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