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Precursors of Literacy Delay among Children at Genetic Risk of Dyslexia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2000

Alison Gallagher ,
Uta Frith  and
Margaret J. Snowling
Alison Gallagher
Affiliation:
University College London, U.K.
Uta Frith
Affiliation:
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London, U.K.
Margaret J. Snowling
Affiliation:
University of York, U.K.
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Dyslexiageneticslanguagereadingspecific learning difficultieswritten language
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , February 2000 , pp. 203 - 213
Copyright
© 2000 Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry

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