Screening Protocol for Early Identification of Brazilian Children at Risk for Dyslexia

Abstract

Early identification of students at risk of dyslexia has been an educational challenge in the past years. This research had two main goals. First, we aimed to develop a screening protocol for early identification of Brazilian children at risk for dyslexia; second, we aimed to identify the predictive variables of this protocol using Principal Component Analysis. The major step involved in developing this protocol was the selection of variables, which were chosen based on the literature review and linguistic criteria. The screening protocol was composed of seven cognitive-linguistic skills: Letter naming; Phonological Awareness (which comprises the following subtests: Rhyme production, Rhyme identification, Syllabic segmentation, Production of words from a given phoneme, Phonemic Synthesis, and Phonemic analysis); Phonological Working memory, Rapid naming Speed; Silent reading; Reading of words and non-words; and Auditory Comprehension of sentences from pictures. A total of 149 children, aged from 6 years to 6 and 11, of both genders who were enrolled in the 1st grade of elementary public schools were submitted to the screening protocol. Principal Component Analysis revealed four factors, accounting for 64.45% of the variance of the Protocol variables: first factor (“pre-reading”), second factor (“decoding”), third factor (“Reading”), and fourth factor “Auditory processing.” The factors found corroborate those reported in the National and International literature and have been described as early signs of dyslexia and reading problems.

An Early Reading Assessment Battery for Multilingual Learners in Malaysia

“…Given that RAN and PA loaded as separate factors supports past findings that RAN is not a subset of PA (Norton and Wolf, 2012). The present study supports the importance of including sublexical processing speed measures in reading assessment batteries in transparent orthographies (de Jong and van der Leij, 2003;Torppa et al, 2012;Germano et al, 2017;Verhoeven and Keuning, 2018).…”

“…The cut-off-point of 25th percentile (based on the overall mean) was used to determine the presence of deficits across all measures within each of the three factors. This method of using a percentile cut-off-point has been used in numerous studies (e.g., Snellings et al, 2009;Germano et al, 2017).…”

“…Phonological memory and letter name knowledge require children to have the ability to recall from short-term memory. In a study of Brazilian first graders using a factor analysis of a battery of literacy assessments, it was reported that auditory comprehension of sentences from pictures and phonological memory loaded as a factor (Germano et al, 2017). Thus, despite the weaker contribution of vocabulary and memory related measures such as phonological memory toward reading, these are important measures to be assessed.…”

“…It is particularly predictive of children who are having reading difficulties in opaque orthographies such as English (e.g., Bowey, 2007 ; Boscardin et al, 2008 ; Savage et al, 2008 ). RAN deficits have also been found to be prevalent in transparent orthographies such as Brazilian Portuguese ( Germano et al, 2017 ), Dutch ( de Jong and van der Leij, 2003 ; Verhoeven and Keuning, 2018 ), German ( Landerl and Wimmer, 2008 ), Finnish ( Torppa et al, 2012 ), Norwegian/Swedish ( Furnes and Samuelsson, 2010 ), and Spanish ( Escribano, 2007 ). In older children, fluency deficits are reported to be much more persistent than phonological deficits in transparent orthographies ( Ziegler et al, 2003 ).…”

Test for Identification of Signs of Dyslexia: effects of developmental variables

“…There is also the "Screening Protocol for Early Identification of Reading Problems (Protocolo de Triagem para Identificação Precoce de Problemas de Leitura)", developed by Germano, César, and Capellini (2017). It consists of seven subtests which assess reading skills of letters, words and pseudo words, phonological awareness, identification and production of rhymes, phonological memory, rapid naming, auditory comprehension of phrases and images.…”