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We aimed to investigate the relationship between reading difficulties in native language (NL: Polish) and English as a foreign language in dyslexia in English and Polish students, respectively, and to develop a model of relations between NL phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short-term memory, and reading in English. Thirteen English students with dyslexia (ED), 15 without (END) and 16 Polish students with dyslexia (PD) and 16 without (PND) participated. We found that dyslexic deficits and different phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence rules between Polish and English interfered with the accuracy and fluency of word and nonword decoding and word recognition. Whereas END scored higher than PD and PND in all reading measures, ED did not, despite a NL advantage. When compared with PND, ED performed equal in nonword decoding, which depends to a higher degree on phoneme-to-grapheme conversion rather than lexical access. When compared with PD, ED performed equally in nonword fluency, which is most likely a nonscript-dependant skill. More variance in reading was explained by NL than FL factors, even if analogical NL/FL skills predicted a given variable. While in ED and END, these relationships agreed with the literature; in PD and PND, NL phonological awareness was not beneficial for English as a foreign language reading.

A fundamental issue for research in mathematics disability (MD) and reading disability (RD) is: If these disabilities are clearly distinct, why is there so high a level of comorbidity, together with the converse; if these disabilities are so similar, why are there clear differences in underlying causes and aetiology? In order to address this puzzle, we introduce the “360 degree analysis” (360DA) framework and apply it to the overlap between RD and MD. The 360DA process starts by analyzing the issue from four perspectives: theoretical, developmental, affective, and pedagogical. Under 360DA, these analyses are then integrated to provide insights for theory, and for individual assessment and support, together with directions for future progress. The analyses confirm extensive similarities between arithmetic and reading development in terms of rote learning, executive function (EF), and affective trauma, but also major differences in terms of the conceptual needs, the motor coordination needs, and the methods of scaffolding. In terms of theory, commonalities are interpreted naturally in terms of initial general developmental delay followed by domain-independent affective trauma following school failure. Dissociations are interpreted in terms of cerebellar vs. hippocampal learning networks, sequential vs. spatial processing, and language vs. spatial scaffolding, with a further dimension of the need for accurate fixation for reading. The framework has significant theoretical and applied implications.

BackgroundThe aim of our study was to compare free writing skills in English as a native language and a foreign language (in English and Polish students respectively). English and Polish have dissimilar orthographies in terms of grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules that is why we were curious to examine whether native and foreign speakers of English exhibit some similarities and/or differences in terms of writing and vocabulary, controlling the dyslexia factor at the same time.Participants and procedure28 English junior high school students: 13 with dyslexia (ED), 15 without (END), and 32 Polish junior high school students: 16 with dyslexia (PD) and 16 without (PND) participated. They completed tests measuring free writing and vocabulary in English as a native (ED and END) and a foreign (PD and PND) language.ResultsWe found that both PD and PND knew fewer words of different difficulty, made more grammar errors, wrote shorter compositions, and composed shorter sentences than ED and END, demonstrating the influence of a NL and a negative linguistic transfer between synthetic Polish and analytical English. In a free writing task, tough, they committed an equal number of phonological and orthographic errors, probably choosing best-known words, which did not allow to demonstrate the expected deficits of students with dyslexia due to phonological deficit.ConclusionsGenerally, both PD and PND, despite having studied EFL for on average 7 years, failed to equal their ED and END peers’ performance in a simple free writing task. Dyslexia and/or related spelling errors correlated with vocabulary in both Polish and English students, confirming that dyslexia may limit one’s mental lexicon for both NL speakers and FL learners.

Research into the relationship between dyslexia and substance abuse has led to inconsistent findings. Some research papers suggest that dyslexics are at increased risk of substance abuse (and related) problems, whilst some research would suggest the contrary. We suggest that these different observations can be accounted for by socioeconomic background and the effect of this on metacognition. There are also an increased number of other factors which may predominantly affect people from low socioeconomic backgrounds which could exacerbate substance abuse.

In this chapter we address the underlying causes of dyslexia, the developmental learning disability, rather than reading disability. In our breakthrough research over 25 years ago we demonstrated that the process of skill automatization of skill was a problem for dyslexic children not only in reading-related skills but also in a range of other skills not obviously linked to reading. In this chapter we report the subsequent development of this framework, first with identification of the cerebellum as a key structure in the automatization deficits, then a “neural circuit” analysis suggesting that many developmental disorders are related to proceduralization problems, with dyslexia associated with specific difficulties in the language/cerebellar procedural circuits. Here we bring this research to the present day, extending the analysis to consider how networks are grown from birth onwards, and introduce the concept of Delayed Neural Commitment (DNC) as a powerful explanatory developmental framework, proposing that dyslexic children are slower to build the connectivity networks on which reading acquisition and fluency depend. This analysis links back to the development of executive function and language networks, and is consistent with all the major theories of dyslexia. We hope that DNC will provide a fruitful and integrative framework for further theoretical and applied research.

Introducción: En esta revisión exponemos, en líneas generales, el razonamiento y la evidencia que respalda nuestra hipótesis que los problemas sufridos por los disléxicos pueden atribuirse a un deficit cerebelar.Método: Primero, ofrecemos una perspectiva general de la evidencia reciente que propone un papel importante del cerebelo en las habilidades cognitivas, particularmente las que apoyan el lenguaje hablado, además de su papel ya reconocido en las habilidades motrices. Segundo, resumimos la evidencia de nuestro laboratorio a favor de que la función cerebelar sea anormal en la dislexia.Resultados: Consideramos dos líneas concretas de evidencia: la conductual, y la evidencia convergent de la neuroimagen, la cual demuestra diferencias significativas entre los grupos disléxicos y de control. También administramos la misma batería de pruebas conductuales a un grupo de niños que son malos lectores no discrepantes.Discusión: Finalmente, proponemos una cadena causal ontogenético para el desarrollo de la dislexia como déficit cerebelar desde el nacimiento, considerando las implicaciones de este marco para las cuestiones clave en la investigación sobre la dislexia.

This chapter reviews the literature on speed of processing and dyslexia. It examines two experiments on long-term learning of skill, in which we established that dyslexic children are able to automatise a skill, but their initial performance is impaired, their apparent rate of learning may be reduced and their final 'quality' of performance is impaired. The chapter also reviews the literature on motor skill, and concludes that there is consistent evidence of difficulty, especially for younger children. The Arithmetic, Coding, Information and Digit span (ACID) profile illustrates the interplay between phonological difficulties and reduced speed of processing. Problems in Information may initially be attributed to low vocabulary which in turn derives from phonological problems, subsequently exacerbated by difficulties in picking up information from the written word. In the simple reaction (SRT) task, no other tone was ever presented, but in the selective choice reaction (SCRT) task, there was an equal probability of a high tone being presented.

Children with developmental dyslexia struggle to learn to read and spell despite adequate intelligence and educational opportunity. Several lines of research are attempting to establish the neurobiological basis of dyslexia, and low-level sensory and motor deficits have been found in dyslexic populations; furthermore, behavioural and imaging data point to cerebellar dysfunction in dyslexia. To investigate this, normal readers (n=19) and children with developmental dyslexia (n=16) were asked to perform various cognitive, literacy, and balancing tasks. Children balanced on the left or right foot, with eyes open or closed, for a period of 10 s during which their movements were recorded with a motion-tracking system. Dyslexic children were less stable than the control children in both eyes-open conditions (left foot P=0.02, right foot P=0.012). While there were no group differences during the eyes-closed conditions, the dyslexic children dropped a foot to correct balance significantly more often than control children (P

Over the last few decades, a growing amount of research has suggested that dyslexics have particular difficulties with skills involving accurate or rapid timing, including musical timing skills. It has been hypothesised that music training may be able to remediate such timing difficulties, and have a positive effect on fundamental perceptual skills that are important in the development of language and literacy skills (Overy, 2000). In order to explore this hypothesis further, the nature and extent of dyslexics' musical difficulties need to be examined in more detail. In the present study, a collection of musical aptitude tests (MATs) were designed specifically for dyslexic children, in order to distinguish between a variety of musical skills and sub-skills. 15 dyslexic children (age 7-11, mean age 9.0) and 11 control children (age 7-10, mean age 8.9) were tested on the MATs, and their scores were compared. Results showed that the dyslexic group scored higher than the control group on 3 tests of pitch skills (possibly attributable to slightly greater musical experience), but lower than the control group on 7 out of 9 tests of timing skills. Particular difficulties were noted on one of the tests involving rapid temporal processing, in which a subgroup of 5 of the dyslexic children (33%) (mean age 8.4) was found to account for all the significant error. Also, an interesting correlation was found between spelling ability and the skill of tapping out the rhythm of a song, which both involve the skill of syllable segmentation. These results support suggestions that timing is a difficulty area for dyslexic children, and suggest that rhythm skills and rapid skills may need particular attention in any form of musical training with dyslexics.

Background: A number of cognitive deficits are associated with dyslexia. However, only a limited amount of research has been performed exploring a putative link between dyslexia and substance use. As substance use is thought to involve a cognitive component, it is possible that the pattern of substance use would be different for dyslexic participants, when compared to nondyslexic controls. During the current study, a guiding hypothesis was that people with dyslexia would demonstrate less substance use than nondyslexic controls. Theories of memory activation, automaticity, and attentional bias in substance use suggest that cognitive components of substance use are important in the development and maintenance of continued substance use and it is thought that, at least some of these components, would be impaired in a dyslexic population.\ud \ud Objectives: If the cognitive deficits displayed by dyslexics somehow impair the development of cognitive components of substance use, substance use for dyslexic participants may be less pronounced. This paper therefore examines this hypothesis by comparing substance use within dyslexic and nondyslexic participants, from an undergraduate population.\ud \ud Methods: This was an exploratory questionnaire-based study. Dyslexic participants (n = 35) were compared to control participants (n = 62) on a series of questions designed to measure their substance use history.\ud \ud Results: The results provided preliminary evidence of a difference between dyslexic and nondyslexic substance use. Dyslexics reported a substance use history that was significantly lower than nondyslexic controls. \ud \ud Conclusions/Importance: These results are interpreted in terms of cognitive deficits within dyslexia and with reference to the cognitive model of substance use.

In this review we focus on the developmental disorders of dyslexia (a disorder of reading) and dysgraphia (a disorder of writing), considering their commonalities and differences with a view to reflecting on the theoretical implications. Interest in dysgraphia was stimulated by the distinction between phonological and surface dyslexia (Castles and Coltheart, 1993), which claimed that orthographic problems (spelling) were separable from phonological reading problems. While this distinction has received mixed support (Snowling et al., 1996; Stanovich et al., 1997) it led to a fruitful analysis not only of the underlying causes of orthographic difficulties, but also to the widespread recognition of developmental difficulties in handwriting control (Deuel, 1995; Manis et al., 1996; Sprenger-Charolles et al., 2000). The result of this theoretical and empirical progress is that there are two usages of the term dysgraphia. One takes dysgraphia to refer to errors of writing that are analogous to errors in reading (e.g., surface, phonological or deep dysgraphia corresponding to surface, phonological and deep dyslexia), the other relating to difficulties in handwriting control. Furthermore, despite these attempts at differentiation, there remains some controversy in the literature as to whether motor difficulties in handwriting should be subsumed under the label dyslexia. This review attempts to tease out the different strands of theoretical research underlying these confusions by analysing explanations of dyslexia and dysgraphia at the cognitive level and the brain level, considering both cortical and sub-cortical systems. First we outline theoretical approaches to developmental dyslexia, introducing causal explanations at the cognitive level, followed by an outline of recent developments in research into motor difficulties in handwriting. We then note the prevalence of comorbidities between developmental

Objective To investigate whether attentional difficulties are a ‘core’ feature of developmental Dyslexia. Methods Behavioural indices and event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 10 dyslexic participants (ages 15.5–17.4) and 10 control participants (ages 14.4–18.3) in the Continuous Performance Task (CPT), an established test of attentional performance. Participants were screened to ensure that none was diagnosable as attention deficit (ADHD). Results There were no significant differences in mean reaction time, error rate or sustained attention between the groups. By contrast, the P3 amplitude was significantly smaller and its latency significantly longer for the dyslexic group. This component was significantly lateralised in controls, whereas in dyslexics it was symmetrical. Conclusions Under the relatively light workload conditions of the CPT, ‘pure’ dyslexic participants showed no behavioural signs of attentional difficulties. The attenuated, delayed and symmetrical ERPs in our dyslexic group may reflect abnormal information processing in the right parietal lobe and abnormal interhemispheric asymmetry in Dyslexia. Significance The behavioural data suggest that abnormal attentional performance is not a ‘core’ feature of developmental Dyslexia, and highlight the importance of distinguishing between dyslexic participants with and without ADHD symptoms. The presence of electrophysiological markers of Dyslexia in CPT revealed the atypical brain organisation that characterises ‘pure’ Dyslexia.

Prism adaptation, in which the participant adapts to prismatic glasses that deflect vision laterally, is a specific test of cerebellar function. Fourteen dyslexic children (mean age 13.5 years); 14 children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD): 6 of whom had comorbid dyslexia; and 12 control children matched for age and IQ underwent prism adaptation (assessed by clay throwing accuracy to a 16.7 degrees visual displacement). All 8 DCD children, 5 of the 6 children with comorbid DCD and dyslexia and 10 of the 14 dyslexic children showed an impaired rate of adaptation, thereby providing strong evidence of impaired cerebellar function in DCD and developmental dyslexia. Taken together with other emerging evidence of overlap between developmental disorders, these findings highlight the importance of complementing research on the individual disorders with research on the commonalities between the disorders.

Balance ability in dyslexia is an issue of considerable theoretical and applied significance, but the literature currently lacks consensus. This study applied objective measures to established balance tasks. 17 dyslexic adults and 20 controls matched for age and IQ undertook the heel-to-toe balance test for 1 minute. Further “dual task” tests were also undertaken in which the subject had to balance while undertaking secondary cognitive tasks (counting, slow choice reaction, fast choice reaction). Two factor analyses of variance revealed significant between-group balance differences in the dual task conditions. 24–82% of the dyslexic group showed balance impairment, depending on the criterion chosen. At the group level, the results are directly consistent with the Nicolson and Fawcett (1990) automatisation deficit hypothesis, but the considerable within-group heterogeneity deserves further investigation.

There is long-standing evidence for verbal working memory impairments in both children and adults with dyslexia. By contrast, spatial memory appears largely to be unimpaired. In an attempt to distinguish between phonological and central executive accounts of the impairments in working memory, a set of phonological and spatial working memory tasks was designed to investigate the key issues in working memory, task type, task demands (static, dynamic, and updating), and task complexity. Significant differences emerged between the dyslexic and nondyslexic participants on the verbal working memory tasks employed in Experiment 1, thereby providing further evidence for continuing dyslexic impairments of working memory into adulthood. The nature of the deficits suggested a problem with the phonological loop, with there being little evidence to implicate an impairment of the central executive. Due to the difficulties associated with separating verbal working memory and phonological processing, however, performance was investigated in Experiment 2 using visuospatial measures of working memory. The results of the visuospatial tasks indicated no between-group differences in static spatial memory, which requires the short-term storage of simultaneously presented information. In almost all conditions there were no between-group differences in dynamic spatial memory that demands the recall of both locationand order of stimuli presented sequentially. However, a significant impairment occurred on the dynamic task under high memory updating load, on which dyslexic adults showed nonphonological working memory deficits. In the absence of an explanation involving verbal recoding, this finding is interpreted in terms of a central executive or automaticity impairment in dyslexia.

There is increasing concern for the skills of the workforce in the UK and elsewhere, but despite this concern until recently there has been little information available which objectively measures basic skills in adults. In this paper, evidence derived from the prose scale of the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS, 1996) is outlined, with emphasis on the performance of adults at the lowest levels, 1 and 2 in the United Kingdom. A new analysis based on the 183 adults who self-reported learning disabilities demonstrates that over 50% of this group perform at level 1 on the prose scale. Over 60% report that these disabilities persist into adult life, although this number falls to 50% in the youngest age group, reflecting changes in recognition of learning disabilities within the education system. The paper concludes with a case study of the redefinition of basic skill levels in Britain based on the IALS levels. The impact of the IALS findings on policy and practice, and in particular through the recommendations of the Moser report, are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Both attentional difficulties and rapid processing deficits have recently been linked with dyslexia. We report two studies comparing the performance of dyslexic and control teenagers on attentional tasks. The two studies were based on two different conceptions of attention. Study 1 employed a design that allowed three key components of attention - focusing, switching, and sustaining - to be investigated separately. One hypothesis under investigation was that rapid processing problems - in particular impaired ability to switch attention rapidly - might be associated with dyslexia. However, although dyslexic participants were significantly less accurate than their controls in a condition where they had to switch attention between two target types, the nature of the deficit suggested that the problem was not in switching attention per se. Thus, in Study 2, we explored an alternative interpretation of the Study 1 results in terms of the classic capacity-limited models of "central" attention. We contrasted two hypotheses: (1) that dyslexic teenagers have reduced cognitive resources versus (2) that they suffer from a general impairment in the ability to automatise basic skills. To investigate the automaticity of the shape recognition component of the task a similar attention paradigm to that used in Study 1 was employed, but using degraded, as well as intact, stimuli. It was found that stimulus degradation led to relatively less impairment for dyslexic than for matched control groups. The results support the hypothesis that dyslexic people suffer from a general impairment in the ability to automatise skills - in this case the skill of automatic shape recognition.

There is increasing evidence that cerebellar deficit may be a causal factor in dyslexia. The cerebellum is considered to be the major structure involved in classical conditioning of the eyeblink response. In a direct test of cerebellar function in learning, 13 dyslexic participants (mean age 19.5 years) and 13 control participants matched for age and IQ undertook an eyeblink conditioning experiment in which for 60 acquisition trials an 800-ms auditory tone (conditioned stimulus, CS) was presented. On 70% of the trials an 80-ms corneal airpuff (unconditioned stimulus, US) was presented 720 ms after the tone onset. The cerebellar deficit hypothesis, uniquely of the causal hypotheses for dyslexia, predicts that the dyslexic participants would show abnormal performance in the incidence and/or timing of the conditioned response (CR) of an eyeblink in response to the tone (and before the US). Three of the dyslexic group showed no conditioning at all. Furthermore, the dyslexic group showed significantly worse "tuning" of the CR timing, together with significantly reduced habituation of the orienting response (OR) to the CS. Individual analyses indicated that 85% of the dyslexic group showed either no conditioning or abnormally poor CR tuning and/or abnormally low OR habituation. It is concluded that the findings provide further converging evidence of cerebellar abnormality in dyslexia and for the first time demonstrate that there are fundamental abnormalities in the way that dyslexic people learn. Equally important, the eye blink conditioning paradigm provides a method of investigating further both homogeneity and heterogeneity in the learning deficits underlying dyslexia and other developmental disorders.

In less than three decades, the concept “cerebellar neurocognition” has evolved from a mere afterthought to an entirely new and multifaceted area of neuroscientific research. A close interplay between three main strands of contemporary neuroscience induced a substantial modification of the traditional view of the cerebellum as a mere coordinator of autonomic and somatic motor functions. Indeed, the wealth of current evidence derived from detailed neuroanatomical investigations, functional neuroimaging studies with healthy subjects and patients and in-depth neuropsychological assessment of patients with cerebellar disorders shows that the cerebellum has a cardinal role to play in affective regulation, cognitive processing, and linguistic function. Although considerable progress has been made in models of cerebellar function, controversy remains regarding the exact role of the “linguistic cerebellum” in a broad variety of nonmotor language processes. This consensus paper brings together a range of different viewpoints and opinions regarding the contribution of the cerebellum to language function. Recent developments and insights in the nonmotor modulatory role of the cerebellum in language and some related disorders will be discussed. The role of the cerebellum in speech and language perception, in motor speech planning including apraxia of speech, in verbal working memory, in phonological and semantic verbal fluency, in syntax processing, in the dynamics of language production, in reading and in writing will be addressed. In addition, the functional topography of the linguistic cerebellum and the contribution of the deep nuclei to linguistic function will be briefly discussed. As such, a framework for debate and discussion will be offered in this consensus paper.

The aim of this study was to evaluate an intervention strategy for children at risk of reading failure in their third year at school. Classes in five UK junior schools were screened to identify children most at risk of reading failure (36 in total, mean initial age 7.6 years). Comparison children, matched overall for age and reading performance, were selected from comparable schools. The selected children were given an individually adaptive, curriculum-based, support programme with the emphasis on word building and phonics skills in the broad reading context. The programme was given to children in pairs for two half-hour sessions per week for 10 weeks. The intervention group made significantly more progress than the comparison group as measured by mean reading standard scores, with an overall 'effect size' of 0.67. A 6-month follow-up indicated that the overall effect size of improvement reduced to 0.55. The intervention proved cost-effective, with comparable improvements to those of Reading Recovery at a...

There is widespread concern over literacy standards in UK schools and growing evidence that problems become increasingly intractable as children grow older. Computer-based reading instruction may provide a ‘fresh start’ that helps a child to rediscover the path to literacy. Recent controlled studies demonstrated that infant and junior school children could be given very cost-effective support using RITA, a computer-based literacy support system that assists, rather than replaces, the teacher in providing support tailored to each child's profile of reading attainments. The present study evaluated the effectiveness of RITA in secondary school with 8 children (mean age 11.7 years) who were initially very seriously disadvantaged in terms of literacy skills (mean reading age 7.3 years). The RITA intervention over a 10 week period led to effective and cost-effective literacy gains. Significant overall improvements were made in the skills targeted, including reading standard scores, and reading speed, accuracy and comprehension. All children reacted positively to the RITA lessons, and most made good progress towards their Individual Education Plans. It is suggested that computer-assisted reading support can be effective in supporting the majority of children with reading failure, even in secondary school.

There is now extensive evidence that the learning processes of dyslexic children show some abnormalities, generally consistent with failure to completely automatise skills. Two studies are reported in which a group of adolescent dyslexic children and a group of normal children matched for age and IQ undertook long-term training on a keyboard spatial task and a choice reaction task respectively. It was concluded that, following extended training, the dyslexic children had normal “strength” of automatisation (as assessed by resistance to unlearning, by ease of relearning after one year, and by dual task performance) but that their initial and their final performance (as assessed by speed and accuracy) were impaired. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that dyslexic children suffer from cerebellar deficit.

Recent studies (Fawcett et al, 1999; Nicolson et al, 1999) have demonstrated that 6 and 8 year old children found to be at risk of reading failure can be provided with very cost-effective support using traditional teaching methods. Nonetheless, a significant minority of children failed to make sufficient progress. The present studies undertook a replication of these studies, using the RITA computer-based literacy support system. The RITA system assists, rather than replaces, the teacher in providing support tailored to each child’s profile of reading attainments. The results indicated that the RITA support was both educationally effective and economically effective, with comparable cost effectiveness to the traditional approach when used with infant school children (6 year olds), and somewhat greater cost effectiveness when used with junior school children (8 year olds). All groups of children reacted very positively to the RITA lessons. It is suggested that computer-assisted reading support can be effective in supporting children at risk of reading failure, even at junior school level.

Literacy underpins education. There is now very widespread concern over standards of literacy for children from multi-cultural backgrounds, who are learning English as a second or subsequent language, and who may have special educational needs. Research evidence suggests that the earlier children's difficulties can be identified, the more effective (and cost-effective) intervention will be, provided that the intervention is tailored to the child's abilities and skills. Nicolson and Fawcett have developed systematic procedures for identifying children at risk for reading difficulty, together with systematic teaching strategies to overcome reading difficulty. In this paper we present case studies of children with EAL (English as an additional language) drawn from a controlled study using computer interventions with secondary school children. Our findings indicate that children with EAL may be more resistant to remediation than some children with learning difficulties. The prognosis is more problematic for children with both EAL and dyslexia.

Specific developmental dyslexia is normally identified by unexpected problems in learning to read for children of average or above average intelligence —“a disorder in children who, despite conventional classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities” (from the definition by the World Federation of Neurology, 1968, p26). A typical estimate of the prevalence of dyslexia in Western school populations is 4% (Badian, 1984; Jorm, Share, Maclean, & Matthews, 1986), with roughly four times as many boys as girls being diagnosed, though other investigators (Shaywitz, Shaywitz, Fletcher and Escobar, 1990) have reported incidence as high as 10%. Dyslexia is genetic in origin (Smith, Kimberling, Pennington, & Lubs, 1983), and cannot therefore be ‘outgrown’ in adulthood, even if the reading difficulties are largely overcome.

In this article, we describe two United Kingdom (UK) screening tests for dyslexia: the Dyslexia Early Screening Test (DEST) and the Cognitive Profiling System (CoPS 1), both normed and designed to be administered by teachers to children four years and older. We first outline the political context in the UK, which for the first time, makes the use of such tests viable. We then outline the research programs behind and the components of each test; reliability and validity are also discussed. Information is presented on the tests in use. We conclude that tests such as these have the potential to identify children as at risk before they fail, halting the cycle of emotional and motivational problems traditionally associated with dyslexia. Both tests are appropriate for use in the United States, and initial reactions from the education sector have been favorable.

There is a growing body of evidence that children with dyslexia have problems not just in reading but in a range of skills including several unrelated to reading. In an attempt to compare the severity and incidence of deficits across these varied domains, children with dyslexia (mean ages 8, 12, and 16 years), and control groups of normally achieving children matched for IQ and for age or reading age, were tested on a range of primitive (basic) skills. The children with dyslexia performed significantly worse than the same-age controls on most tasks, and significantly worse even than the reading-age controls on phoneme segmentation, picture naming speed, word tachistoscopic word recognition, speeded bead threading and some balance tasks. The overall performance of the children with dyslexia is interpreted as showing less complete automatization than normal.

It is now thought that the cerebellum is involved in the acquisition of "language dexterity" in addition to its established role in motor skill acquisition and execution. Mild cerebellar impairment, therefore, provides a possible explanation of a range of problems shown by children with dyslexia. The authors have established suggestive evidence in support of this hypothesis in tests of balance and of time estimation. In a further test of the hypothesis, a battery of clinical tests for cerebellar impairment, including tests of muscle tone and of coordination, was administered to matched groups of children with dyslexia and control children aged 10, 14, and 18 years (55 subjects in all). The children with dyslexia showed highly significant impairments on all the cerebellar tests, and significant impairment compared even with reading age controls on 11 of the 14 tasks. Deficits on the majority of tests were among the largest found in our research program. The findings, therefore, provide further intriguing evidence of cerebellar impairment in dyslexia. We speculate that the well-established phonological deficits in dyslexia may arise initially from inefficient articulatory control attributable to cerebellar impairment.

Three groups of children with dyslexia, with mean age 8, 13 and 17 years, together with three groups of normally achieving children matched for age and IQ with the dyslexic groups, undertook tests of sound categorization and phoneme deletion. The design allowed comparison not only across chronological age but also across reading age. The children with dyslexia performed significantly worse even than their reading age controls on both tasks. Indeed, overall performance of the 17 year old children with dyslexia was closest, but inferior, to that of the 8 year old controls. Since the sound categorization task was designed to minimize working memory load, the results extend previous findings on the phonological awareness deficits in dyslexia by dissociating the deficit from memory load and by showing that it persists at least into late adolescence.

Three groups of children with dyslexia (mean ages 8, 13, and 17 years) and three groups of normally achieving children matched for age and IQ with the dyslexic groups undertook three tests of motor skill. For peg placing and articulation rate, the children with dyslexia were significantly slower than their chronological age controls, and equivalent to their reading age controls. For bead threading, they were significantly slower than even their reading age controls. The results suggest that children with dyslexia have persistent, and unexpectedly severe, problems in motor skill.

Ten adults with dyslexia (4 women and 6 men, mean age: 26.8 years, range: 19–43 years) and 11 controls (5 women and 6 men, mean age: 20.5 years, range: 18–29 years) were tested on their ability to differentiate between real and false traffic signs. The stimuli, computer-presented color pictures, were chosen to minimize the applicability of verbal or written linguistic skills to the task. The adults with dyslexia recognized the traffic signs significantly less well than did the controls. Furthermore, whereas for the controls there was a significant correlation between traffic sign recognition and driving experience, no such correlation was found for the adults with dyslexia. The results are interpreted in terms of a deficit in implicit learning.

In addition to their language-related difficulties, dyslexic children suffer problems in motor skill, balance, automatization and speeded performance. Given the recent evidence for cerebellar involvement in the acquisition of language fluency, these problems suggest cerebellar deficit. To test the hypothesis of cerebellar dysfunction in dyslexia, a time estimation task considered to be a sensitive index of cerebellar function was administered to matched groups of dyslexic and control children. The dyslexic children showed the predicted deficit on time estimation (among the most severe obtained in our research programme) but not on a control, loudness estimation, task. Cerebellar dysfunction, therefore, provides a parsimonious account of otherwise disparate data on deficits in dyslexia.

This paper describes the rationale behind the Dyslexia Early Screening Test for identifying children at risk for dyslexia before they fail to learn to read. The DEST comprises 11 simple subtests – speed, phonological skill, motor skill, cerebellar function and knowledge – which together provide an overall ‘at risk’ judgement, together with an ability profile that indicates the particular areas of difficulty. It has been designed to be administered by teachers or health professionals with no training in psychological testing, and takes about 30 minutes per child. It forms the first stage in a planned screening assessment support system and is currently under evaluation in British schools.

This article presents an international perspective of the proposed changes to the DSM-5 for learning disabilities (LD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) across ten countries: Australia, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. We provide perspectives of the present situation for youth with LD and youth with ADHD and describe the legislation, prevalence rates, and educational systems that serve students with disabilities in the respective countries. We also present a discussion of the expected impact of the proposed changes for the diagnosis of LD and ADHD in each country.

Five groups of children, including two groups of dyslexics (aged 15 and 11 years), were tested on simple reaction, selective choice reaction, and lexical decision tasks. In simple reactions to a pure tone, the dyslexic children responded as quickly as their chronological age controls and significantly faster than their reading age controls. In selective choice reactions to pure tones, the dyslexic children were significantly impaired compared with their chronological age controls and no faster than their reading age controls. This speed impairment obtained even though a selective choice reaction task has only one positive response. In “by-item” analyses of lexical decisions to spoken words, the dyslexic children were significantly impaired compared even with their reading age controls. The pattern of results suggests that at least two factors contribute to slowness of dyslexic children: a general deficit reflected in slower stimulus classification speed and a linguistic deficit reflected in slower lexical access speed.