Steve M. Heath

On the "specifics" of specific reading disability and specific language impairment.

The reading and oral language scores of 110 children with a specific reading disability (SRD) and 102 children with a specific language impairment (SLI) indicated that approximately 53% of children with an SRD and children with an SLI could be equally classified as having an SRD or an SLI, 55% of children with an SRD have impaired oral language, and 51% of children with an SLI have a reading disability. Finding that a large percentage of children can be equally classified as SRD or SLI has repercussions for the criteria used to define an SRD, for conceptualising subgroups of learning disability, and for estimates of the incidence of SRD. Further, it highlights the need for future studies to assess both the reading and oral language abilities of SRD and SLI participants to determine how specifically impaired and homogeneous samples really are.

Auditory Temporal Processing in Disabled Readers With and Without Oral Language Delay

Inferior auditory temporal processing has been postulated as causally linked to phonological processing deficits in disabled readers with concomitant oral language delay (LDRDs), and absent in specifically disabled readers with normal oral language (SRDs). This investigation compared SRDs, LDRDs and normal readers aged 7-10 years on measures of auditory temporal processing (temporal order judgement) and phonological decoding (nonword reading). LDRDs exhibited deficits in temporal order judgement compared with normal readers, from whom SRDs did not differ significantly. These findings suggest that auditory temporal processing and oral language are related; however, very large within-group variability in the auditory temporal processing data further suggests that this relationship prevails in only a proportion of disabled readers with concomitant oral language weakness. In nonword reading, LDRDs performed worst of all, but SRDs also exhibited significant deficits compared with normal readers. Taken together, our results preclude the conceptualisation of temporal processing deficits as the unitary cause of phonological and language deficits in disabled readers.

Psychophysical indices of perceptual functioning in dyslexia : A psychometric analysis

An influential causal theory attributes dyslexia to visual and/or auditory perceptual deficits. This theory derives from group differences between individuals with dyslexia and controls on a range of psychophysical tasks, but there is substantial variation, both between individuals within a group and from task to task. We addressed two questions. First, do psychophysical measures have sufficient reliability to assess perceptual deficits in individuals? Second, do different psychophysical tasks measure a common underlying construct? We studied 104 adults with a wide range of reading ability and two comparison groups of 49 dyslexic adults and 41 adults with normal reading, measuring performance on four auditory and two visual tasks. We observed moderate to high test–retest reliability for most tasks. While people with dyslexia were more likely to display poor task performance, we were unable to demonstrate either construct validity for any of the current theories of perceptual deficits or predictive validity for reading ability. We suggest that deficient perceptual task performance in dyslexia may be an associated (and inconsistent) marker of underlying neurological abnormality, rather than being causally implicated in reading difficulties.

A spotlight on preschool: the influence of family factors on children's early literacy skills.

Rationale Phonological awareness, letter knowledge, oral language (including sentence recall) and rapid automatised naming are acknowledged within-child predictors of literacy development. Separate research has identified family factors including socio-economic status, parents’ level of education and family history. However, both approaches have left unexplained significant amounts of variance in literacy outcomes. This longitudinal study sought to improve prospective classification accuracy for young children at risk of literacy failure by adding two new family measures (parents’ phonological awareness and parents’ perceived self-efficacy), and then combining the within-child and family factors. Method Pre-literacy skills were measured in 102 four year olds (46 girls and 56 boys) at the beginning of Preschool, and then at the beginning and end of Kindergarten, when rapid automatised naming was also measured. Family factors data were collected at the beginning of Preschool, and children’s literacy outcomes were measured at the end of Year 1 (age 6–7 years). Results Children from high-risk backgrounds showed poorer literacy outcomes than low-risk students, though three family factors (school socio-economic status, parents’ phonological awareness, and family history) typically accounted for less Year 1 variance than the within-child factors. Combining these family factors with the end of Kindergarten within-child factors provided the most accurate classification (i.e., sensitivity = .85; specificity = .90; overall correct = .88). Implications Our approach would identify at-risk children for intervention before they began to fail. Moreover, it would be cost-effective because although few at-risk children would be missed, allocation of unnecessary educational resources would be minimised.

Auditory temporal processing, phonological awareness, and oral language ability in pre-readers: Can we identify children at risk for reading disability more accurately?

Abstract A longitudinal study was designed to investigate the possibility of improving current accuracy in prediction of reading disability, using phonological awareness (PA), oral language, and auditory temporal processing (ATP) as predictors. Preschoolers (n = 106) were tested on PA, and two groups were selected from the upper and lower quartiles of the PA distribution for initial testing as prereaders on ATP and oral language, and later testing on reading and oral language at the end of years 1, 2 , and 3. Oral language markedly improved levels of prediction previously achieved using PA alone. However, although ATP is related to PA and oral language in prereaders, it contributed little to prediction of reading achievement beyond that afforded by measures of PA and oral language. Options for improving the levels of prediction achieved here by increasing the sensitivity of our measure of AJP are discussed.

Letter to Dr Nelson

READING INSTRUCTION IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS As researchers, psychologists, linguists and educators who have studied the processes underlying the development of reading, and who are familiar with the scientific research literature relating to the acquisition of reading, we are writing to you to express our concerns with the way in which reading is typically being taught in Australian schools. We would like particularly to draw to your attention to the continuing discrepancy between the model of reading development that forms the basis for most of our current school curricula and teaching methods, and the model of reading development that is emerging as a result of the research into reading that has been undertaken over the past twenty to thirty years. Reading instruction in Australia is based largely on the whole language approach, which makes the assumption that learning to read is like learning to speak, and requires only exposure to a rich language environment without any specific teaching of the alphabetic system and lettersound relationships. However, the research on reading development has shown clearly that this is not the case, and that the ability to read is a complex learned skill which requires specific teaching. In the United States there has been widespread public debate about different approaches to the teaching of reading, which has led to a series of government-funded reports designed to examine the scientific evidence relating to how children learn to read, and what strategies are most effective in teaching reading. All of these reports have come up with essentially the same conclusion; that mastery of the alphabetic code is essential to proficient reading, and that methods of instruction that teach this code directly are more effective than those that do not. In Australia there has been little public debate about different approaches to the teaching of reading, and little change in teaching practices that over the past twenty years have been based predominantly on the beliefs and assumptions associated with whole language. The claim has been made that the dichotomy between different approaches to the teaching of reading is false, and that elements of both major approaches (whole language and phonics) are used to teach children how to read. The debate between the two approaches has therefore been dismissed as divisive and unproductive. While there have been some initiatives in some states and in some individual schools to modify teaching methods to incorporate a greater emphasis on phonological awareness and phonics instruction, our view is that there is as yet little evidence of a major shift in the fundamental assumptions underlying the teaching of reading in Australia. The view that children learn to read by being exposed to literacy activities from an early age persists, and systematic teaching of the alphabetic principle is therefore believed to be unnecessary, since most children will pick it up through exposure to reading. In cases where children do not learn to read, their failure is blamed on their parents or their background rather than on ineffective teaching methods, and calls are made for greater efforts to introduce reading to children at an earlier age, either through access to preschool programs or by providing their parents with free books to read to their children at home. Neither of these solutions addresses the fundamental problem that poor reading skills are in most cases associated with ineffective teaching practices, and that the children who are most disadvantaged by ineffective teaching are those from less advantaged backgrounds whose parents are unable to make up for the deficiencies of the school by teaching their children how to read.