Anna Cunningham

The Roles of Family History of Dyslexia, Language, Speech Production and Phonological Processing in Predicting Literacy Progress.

It is well established that speech, language and phonological skills are closely associated with literacy, and that children with a family risk of dyslexia (FRD) tend to show deficits in each of these areas in the preschool years. This paper examines what the relationships are between FRD and these skills, and whether deficits in speech, language and phonological processing fully account for the increased risk of dyslexia in children with FRD. One hundred and fifty-three 4-6-year-old children, 44 of whom had FRD, completed a battery of speech, language, phonology and literacy tasks. Word reading and spelling were retested 6 months later, and text reading accuracy and reading comprehension were tested 3 years later. The children with FRD were at increased risk of developing difficulties in reading accuracy, but not reading comprehension. Four groups were compared: good and poor readers with and without FRD. In most cases good readers outperformed poor readers regardless of family history, but there was an effect of family history on naming and nonword repetition regardless of literacy outcome, suggesting a role for speech production skills as an endophenotype of dyslexia. Phonological processing predicted spelling, while language predicted text reading accuracy and comprehension. FRD was a significant additional predictor of reading and spelling after controlling for speech production, language and phonological processing, suggesting that children with FRD show additional difficulties in literacy that cannot be fully explained in terms of their language and phonological skills.

Early predictors of phonological and morphological awareness and the link with reading: Evidence from children with different patterns of early deficit

This study examines the contribution of early phonological processing (PP) and language skills on later phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA), as well as the links among PA, MA, and reading. Children 4–6 years of age with poor PP at the start of school showed weaker PA and MA 3 years later (age 7–9), regardless of their language skills. PA and phonological and morphological strategies predict reading accuracy, whereas MA predicts reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that children with poor early PP are more at risk of developing deficits in MA and PA than children with poor language. They also suggest that there is a direct link between PA and reading accuracy and between MA and reading comprehension that cannot be accounted for by strategy use at the word level.

Age and Schooling Effects on Early Literacy and Phoneme Awareness.

Previous research on age and schooling effects is largely restricted to studies of children who begin formal schooling at 6years of age, and the measures of phoneme awareness used have typically lacked sensitivity for beginning readers. Our study addresses these issues by testing 4 to 6year-olds (first 2years of formal schooling in the United Kingdom) on a sensitive dynamic measure of phoneme awareness and tests of early literacy. There were significant effects of both age and schooling on the dynamic measure of phoneme awareness, word reading, spelling, and letter name knowledge, but there were no significant Age×Time interactions. This indicates that older children within this age group generally outperform their younger classmates (although they do not make faster progress) and that this advantage is developed prior to the start of school.

Reading-Related Skills in Earlier- and Later-Schooled Children

We investigate the effects of age-related factors and formal instruction on the development of reading-related skills in children aged 4 and 7 years. Age effects were determined by comparing two groups of children at the onset of formal schooling; one aged 7 (later-schooled) and one aged 4 (earlier-schooled). Schooling effects were measured by comparing the later-schooled group with earlier-schooled age-matched controls. There were significant effects of age and schooling on phonological awareness and visual–verbal learning, and an effect of age, but not schooling, on vocabulary and short-term verbal memory. We conclude that age-related factors and reading instruction contribute to the development of phoneme awareness and that vocabulary and verbal memory improve with age.

Deconstructing phonological tasks: The contribution of stimulus and response type to the prediction of early decoding skills

Phonological tasks are highly predictive of reading development but their complexity obscures the underlying mechanisms driving this association. There are three key components hypothesised to drive the relationship between phonological tasks and reading; (a) the linguistic nature of the stimuli, (b) the phonological complexity of the stimuli, and (c) the production of a verbal response. We isolated the contribution of the stimulus and response components separately through the creation of latent variables to represent specially designed tasks that were matched for procedure. These tasks were administered to 570 6 to 7-year-old children along with standardised tests of regular word and non-word reading. A structural equation model, where tasks were grouped according to stimulus, revealed that the linguistic nature and the phonological complexity of the stimulus predicted unique variance in decoding, over and above matched comparison tasks without these components. An alternative model, grouped according to response mode, showed that the production of a verbal response was a unique predictor of decoding beyond matched tasks without a verbal response. In summary, we found that multiple factors contributed to reading development, supporting multivariate models over those that prioritize single factors. More broadly, we demonstrate the value of combining matched task designs with latent variable modelling to deconstruct the components of complex tasks.

A combined movement and story-telling intervention enhances motor competence and language ability in pre-schoolers to a greater extent than movement or story-telling alone:

This study examined the effect of a six week combined movement and story-telling intervention on motor competence and naming vocabulary in British pre-schoolers. Using a cluster randomised design, three pre-school classes were allocated to one of a combined movement and story-telling intervention (n = 22), or a movement only (n = 25) or story-telling only (n = 27) intervention. Motor competence and language ability were assessed pre, post and eight weeks post intervention. Results from repeated measures ANOVA indicated significantly greater improvement in both motor competence and language ability pre to post intervention for the combined movement and story-telling group compared to the movement only or story-telling only groups. However, for the period post intervention to eight weeks post intervention the magnitude of change for motor competence and language ability was significant for all groups and similar in magnitude. The results of this study demonstrate the efficacy of combining movement and story-telling, over movement or story-telling alone, to benefit both motor competence and language ability in pre-schoolers. Combining both movement and story-telling appears to offer synergistic benefits in relation to physical and communication development, which are critical for good development in the early years.