Prevalence and nature of late-emerging poor readers.

Abstract

Some children demonstrate adequate or better reading achievement in early school grades, but fall significantly behind their peers in later grades. These children are often referred to as late-emerging poor readers. In this study, we investigated the prevalence and heterogeneity of these poor readers. We also examined the early language and nonverbal cognitive abilities of late-emerging poor readers. Participants were 493 children who were a subsample from an epidemiological study of language impairments in school-age children. In kindergarten, children were administered a battery of language, early literacy, and nonverbal cognitive measures. Word reading and reading comprehension achievement was assessed in second, fourth, eighth, and tenth grades. Latent transition analysis was used to model changes in reading classification (good vs. poor reader) across grades. Population estimates revealed that 13.4% percent of children could be classified as late-emerging poor readers. These children could be divided into those with problems in comprehension alone (52%), word reading alone (36%), or both (12%). Further results indicated that late-emerging poor readers often had a history of language and/or nonverbal cognitive impairments in kindergarten. Subtypes of poor readers also differed significantly in their profiles of language, early literacy, and nonverbal cognitive abilities in kindergarten. Results are discussed in terms of causal factors and implications for early identification.

Late-Emerging and Resolving Dyslexia: A Follow-Up Study from Age 3 to 14

“…Little research has been conducted on the characteristics of resolving and late-emerging RD, although the proportion of late-emerging cases has been reported to be approximately 40% of all RD cases in English (Catts et al, 2012;Leach et al, 2003;Lipka et al, 2006). The scarcity of information on these resolving and late-emerging RD groups presents challenges to early identification and prevention efforts of RD.…”

“…Four previous studies have directly addressed the stability of RD classification (Catts et al, 2012;Etmanskie et al, in press;Leach et al, 2003;Lipka et al, 2006). The studies have varied in their identification of RD.…”

“…Most of the studies, however, have focused on the early phases of reading development or used relatively short follow-ups. The few studies that have followed reading development for several years have suggested that, although there is high stability in RD across grades at the group level (e.g., Compton, Fuchs, Fuchs, Elleman, & Gilbert, 2008;Landerl & Wimmer, 2008), there are-at least in English-also a considerable number of cases that move across the clinical threshold over time: children who are no longer affected (resolving RD; e.g., Catts, Compton, Tomblin, & Bridges, 2012) and children who do not develop RD until Grade 4 (late-emerging RD; e.g., Catts et al, 2012;Etmanskie, Partanen, & Siegel, in press;Leach, Scarborough, & Rescorla, 2003;Lipka, Lesaux, & Siegel, 2006).…”

“…They found that 36% of all RD cases were late-emerging. Catts et al (2012) followed 493 children from Kindergarten to Grade 10. They reported that approximately 25% of all RD cases had late-emerging problems in decoding.…”

A randomized control trial of Shared Evaluation Pedagogy: The near-term and long-term impact of dialogically organized reading instruction

“…Each group consisted of four to six students whose diagnostic profiles indicated grade level or near grade level word recognition skills, but whose comprehension scores as measured on the QRI-II (Leslie & Caldwell, 1995) fell from one to five years below grade level. Such a profile of reading (strong decoding skills, assessed comprehension not as strong) appears frequently among upper elementary students, particularly among emergent bilingual students reading in their emerging second language (Burgoyne, Kelly, Whiteley, & Spooner, 2009;Cain & Oakhill, 1999;Catts, Compton, Tomblin, & Bridges, 2012).…”