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This longitudinal study examined early cognitive risk and protective factors for Grade 2 reading disability (RD). We first examined the reading outcome of 198 children in four developmental cognitive subgroups that were identified in our previous analysis: dysfluent trajectory, declining trajectory, unexpected trajectory and typical trajectory. We found that RD was unevenly distributed among the subgroups, although children with RD were found in all subgroups. A majority of the children with RD had familial risk for dyslexia. Second, we examined in what respect children with similar early cognitive development but different RD outcome differ from each other in cognitive skills, task-focused behaviour and print exposure. The comparison of the groups with high cognitive risk but different RD outcome showed significant differences in phonological skills, in the amount of shared reading and in task-focused behaviour. Children who ended up with RD despite low early cognitive risk had poorer cognitive skills, more task avoidance and they were reading less than children without RD and low cognitive risk. In summary, lack of task avoidance seemed to act as a protective factor, which underlines the importance of keeping children interested in school work and reading. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

This family-risk (FR) study examined whether the literacy skills of parents with dyslexia are predictive of the literacy skills of their offspring. We report data from 31 child-parent dyads where both had dyslexia (FR-D) and 68 dyads where the child did not have dyslexia (FR-ND). Findings supported the differences in liability of FR children with and without dyslexia: the parents of the FR-D children had more severe difficulties in pseudoword reading and spelling accuracy, in rapid word recognition, and in text reading fluency than the parents of the FR-ND children. Finally, parental skills were found to be significant predictors of children's Grade 3 reading and spelling. Parental skills predicted children's reading and spelling accuracy even after controlling for children's preschool skills. Our findings suggest that the literacy skills of a parent with dyslexia might be valuable in assessing early on their child's liability to dyslexia. (Contains 7 tables.)