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When dyslexia is diagnosed late, the question is whether this is due to late‐emerging (LE) or late‐identified (LI) problems. In a random selection of dyslexia‐diagnosis case files we distinguished early‐diagnosed (Grade 1–3, n = 116) and late‐diagnosed (Grade 4–6) dyslexia. The late‐diagnosed files were divided into LE (n = 54) and LI dyslexia (n = 45). The LE group consisted of children whose national‐curriculum literacy outcomes did not warrant referral for dyslexia diagnosis in Grades 1–2; the LI group of children whose literacy outcomes did, but who were referred for diagnostic assessment after Grade 3. At the time of diagnosis, the percentage of poor performers on word‐level literacy measures generally did not differ between the groups. Only the LE group contained fewer poor performers than the early‐diagnosed and LI group on some word‐reading measures. All groups showed similar distributions of phonological difficulties. There were no indications of compensation through vocabulary, memory or IQ in either late‐diagnosed group. Our diagnosis‐based study confirms and extends previous research‐based studies on LE dyslexia. Moreover, it shows that LI dyslexia exists, which can be regarded as the existence of instructional casualties. The findings speak to issues of identification, diagnosis and compensation and call for further efforts to improve the early identification of dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption that statistical learning is affected in dyslexia has generally been evaluated in children and adults with diagnosed dyslexia, not in pre‐literate children with a family risk (FR) of dyslexia. In this study, four‐to‐five‐year‐old FR children (n = 25) and No‐FR children (n = 33) completed tasks of emerging literacy (phoneme awareness and RAN). They also performed an online non‐adjacent dependency learning (NADL) task, based on the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task paradigm. Children's accuracy (hits), signal sensitivity (d′) and reaction times were measured. The FR group performed marginally more poorly on phoneme awareness and significantly more poorly on RAN than the No‐FR group. Regarding NADL outcomes, the results were less straightforward: the data suggested successful statistical learning for both groups, as indicated by the hit and reaction time curves found. However, the FR group was less accurate and slower on the task than the No‐FR group. Furthermore, unlike the No‐FR group, performance in the FR group varied as a function of the specific stimulus presented. Taken together, these findings fail to show a robust difference in statistical learning between children with and without an FR of dyslexia at preschool age, in line with earlier work on older children and adults with dyslexia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study related the non-word repetition (NWR) abilities of 4-year-old children at-risk of dyslexia and children with specific language impairment (SLI) to their reading abilities at age eight. The results show that the SLI group obtained the lowest NWR score and the at-risk group performed in-between the control and SLI group. Approximately half of the at-risk and SLI group showed reading difficulties. Literacy and NWR abilities were correlated for the at-risk group, but not for the SLI group. The findings point toward differences between the groups and suggest that dyslexia and SLI should not be treated as a similar disorder. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a prospective longitudinal research programme exploring the connection between language acquisition deficits and dyslexia. The language development profile of children at-risk for dyslexia is compared to that of age-matched controls as well as of children who have been diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI). The experiments described concern the perception and production of grammatical morphology, categorical perception of speech sounds, phonological processing (non-word repetition), mispronunciation detection, and rhyme detection. The results of each of these indicate that the at-risk children as a group underperform in comparison to the controls, and that, in most cases, they approach the SLI group. It can be concluded that dyslexia most likely has precursors in language development, also in domains other than those traditionally considered conditional for the acquisition of literacy skills. The dyslexia-SLI connection awaits further, particularly qualitative, analyses. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]