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This article describes a Response to Intervention (RTI) model of early identification and intervention to prevent reading failure. A simple screening system to alert teachers to children who may not have some of the prerequisite skills necessary for reading and a whole class intervention system will be described. The success of these initiatives was measured systematically, and the incidence of reading difficulties was reduced to 1.5% in the children who had English as a first language and in children who had English as an additional language. The article also examines the relative influence of students' first language on learning to read in English and the benefits of bilingualism.

We suggest that the American poet E.E. Cummings was probably mildly dyslexic. Evidence, which is drawn in particular from inspection of his archival papers, includes consideration of his spelling, letter formation, handwriting, approach to page orientation, proclivity for exploration of the mirror-image, reading and educational history, struggles in the composition of analytical prose, and notable strengths in lateral thinking and the making of surprising lateral connections. We emphasise the importance of Cummings' modernist literary context as the primary shaping force for his literary aesthetic and we resist any simply reductive explanation of his literary style as a function of dyslexia. However, dyslexia may be one factor that contributes to his unique style.

The purpose of this study was to investigate literacy development beyond the early school years. We investigated mean-level and rank-order changes in two reading (word decoding speed and reading comprehension) and two spelling (word and pseudoword spelling accuracy) tasks during a 4-year period from beginning to the later grades of elementary school, and examined whether rank-order changes in literacy skills could be predicted from verbal working memory, phonological awareness, and morpho-syntactic awareness. The sample consisted of Croatian speaking children, poor (n = 50) and good (n = 61) readers. Croatian is a language with a highly transparent orthography but a rather complex grammar. Word decoding speed and word spelling accuracy improved significantly over the study period, word decoding speed more so among good than among poor readers, supporting the Matthew effect hypothesis. Literacy skills were moderately stable, with the highest stability coefficients obtained for word decoding speed, and the lowest for pseudoword spelling. The predictors of rank-order changes varied across literacy outcomes, but did not differ for poor and good readers. Morpho-syntactic awareness predicted rank-order development of all outcomes except for word spelling. Phonological awareness predicted rank-order development of reading comprehension and word spelling. Verbal working memory predicted rank-order development of word spelling only, and at a low level. The finding that the more language related cognitive variables, i.e., morpho-syntactic and phonological skills, were stronger predictors of literacy development than working memory, for both poor and good readers, suggests remedial focus on these more predictive variables.

Dyslexia and other learning disabilities are not being properly recognized and treated in our educational system or society at large. Unrecognized and untreated learning disabilities represent a serious social and economic problem, not only to the individual but to society as a whole. For example, antisocial behavior, as seen in prison populations and juvenile detention centers (e.g., Grigorenko, 2006; Quinn, Rutherford, Leone, Osher, & Poirier, 2006; Zhang, Barrett, Katsiyannis, & Yoon, 2011), homelessness (Barwick & Siegel, 1996), substance abuse (McClelland, Elkington, Teplin, & Abram, 2004), suicide (McBride & Siegel, 1997), and emotional difficulties (Livingston, Siegel, & Ribary, 2018) are often a result of dyslexia and other learning disabilities that have not been properly identified and/or treated. The system has failed on all levels. It is chaotic and unsystematic, the result of flawed logic and ignorance of, or unwillingness to consider, the available research. In this article, Linda Siegel documents these issues and proposes inexpensive and practical solutions. [William M. Cruickshank Memorial Lecture Delivered at the 2018 Conference of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities.]

In the past 20 years, the analysis of individual change has become a key focus in educational research. There are several parametric analyses that centre upon quantifying change. Some researchers state that such analyses should only occur if the measure itself remains completely unchanged across waves, arguing that it is not possible to link or connect the scores, either methodologically or conceptually, of measures whose content, wording, response categories, or response formats vary across waves. Because it is not always possible or warranted to use the exact same measure over time, however, it is vital to explore more fully the problem of analysing change and growth with measures that vary across waves. To this end, the primary objective of this paper is to expand upon the statistical work of Lloyd and Zumbo (2007) by introducing the non-parametric hierarchical linear model (NPAR-HLM), a workable solution to the problem of analysing change/growth with measures that change over multiple waves. An example of the implementation of the solution is provided, as is a discussion of the solution's assumptions, strengths, and limitations. (Contains 2 figures, 4 tables and 4 endnotes.)

Learning disabilities are associated with mental health, behavioural and social difficulties. Developmental dyslexia is a particularly salient example of a learning disability that is associated with social and emotional consequences that are not considered primary features of the disorder. These issues can remain and, in some cases, escalate in adulthood. Practitioners should be made aware of the consequences of the emotional impact of such learning disabilities. The following is a comprehensive review of over 100 journal articles investigating the emotional consequences of developmental dyslexia. Articles published between 1980 and 2018 were found using keywords "dyslexia" and "emotion" or "internalizing behaviour", "externalizing behaviour", "depression" or "anxiety". This review provides an overview of the literature investigating the emotional consequences of developmental dyslexia and suggestions to avoid or at least minimize these consequences on the individual, their family and society are provided.

This article reports the results of two studies examining the effectiveness of the whole-word and analytic instructional methods in teaching different subtypes of readers (students with normal reading performance, surface dyslexics, phonological dyslexics, and both dyslexic patterns) and four kinds of Chinese two-character words (two regular [RR], two irregular [II], one regular, one irregular [RI], and one irregular, one regular [IR]). The approaches employed were the analytic method, which focuses on highlighting the phonological components of words, and the whole-word method, which focuses on learning by sight. Two studies were conducted among a sample of 40 primary school students with different reading patterns. The aim was to examine the relationships among different subtypes of readers, two-character words, and instructional methods. In general, students with a surface dyslexic pattern benefited more from the analytic methods. Regarding combinations of different kinds of two-character words, all subtypes of students performed better in reading RR words than in reading II words.

There are some children who encounter unexpected reading difficulties in the fourth grade. This phenomenon has been described as late emerging reading disabilities (LERD). Using Grade 4 as a starting point, this study examined the reading development of 964 children between kindergarten and Grade 7. The results showed that 72.0% of children had typical reading performance in Grade 4, whereas there was 0.7% with poor word reading, 12.6% with poor reading comprehension, 2.5% with poor word reading and comprehension, and 12.2% with borderline performance. We also showed that there were similar proportions of children who had early versus late emerging reading difficulties; however, most of the late emerging poor readers recovered by Grade 7. Furthermore, our study showed that poor comprehenders showed poorer performance than typical readers on word reading, pseudoword decoding, and spelling between Grade 1 and Grade 7 and poorer performance on a working memory task in kindergarten. Overall, this study showed that most children recover from late emerging reading problems and that working memory may be an early indicator for reading comprehension difficulties.

Can young students' early reading abilities in their first language (L1) predict later literacy development in a second language (L2)? The cross-language relationships between Chinese (L1) and English (L2) among 87 Hong Kong students were explored in a longitudinal study. Chinese word-reading fluency, Chinese rapid digit naming, and Chinese rhyme awareness at age 7 (grade 1), with age and IQ taken into account, were significant concurrent and longitudinal predictors of English word reading, and text-level reading and writing skills across ages 7-10. These three Chinese measures together accounted for 16-28% of unique variance in the English literacy tasks across the three-year period. Students who showed word-reading difficulties in Chinese in grade 1 also performed more poorly than average Chinese readers in English reading and related cognitive tasks later on, especially on phonological tasks. The results provided evidence for the cross-language transfer of cognitive-linguistic abilities between two distinctly different orthographies. L1 markers underlying reading difficulties in both L1 and L2 can serve as early indicators of possible reading problems that may arise later in L2. These findings have clinical, educational, and theoretical implications.

To fully acquire a language, especially its phonology, children need linguistic input from native speakers early on. When interaction with native speakers is not always possible--e.g. for children learning a second language that is not the societal language--audios are commonly used as an affordable substitute. But does such non-interactive input work? Two experiments evaluated the usefulness of audio storybooks in acquiring a more native-like second-language accent. Young children, first- and second-graders in Hong Kong whose native language was Cantonese Chinese, were given take-home listening assignments in a second language, either English or Putonghua Chinese. Accent ratings of the children's story reading revealed measurable benefits of non-interactive input from native speakers. The benefits were far more robust for Putonghua than English. Implications for second-language accent acquisition are discussed.

An examination was conducted to address issues concerning the assessment of students with learning disabilities (LD) in English speaking Canadian postsecondary institutions. These issues concern the nature of appropriate and evidence-based assessment and whether there is fair access to academic accommodations for students with LD. Access to academic accommodations is granted when an acceptable psycho-educational assessment provides an LD diagnosis, but what "acceptable" means appears very inconsistent across settings. This examination has ascertained that there is still no commonly accepted and empirically based procedure for the assessment of LD. Instead, a confusing variety of assessment practices exist, resulting in Canadian postsecondary accommodations practices being opaque and, therefore, discriminatory and vulnerable to legal challenges.

This study examined the longitudinal effects of an early literacy intervention in Kindergarten. A group of children completed reading and cognitive measures between Kindergarten (5-6 years old) and Grade 7 (12-13 years old). Our results showed that 22% of children were identified as at-risk for reading deficits in Kindergarten, but only 6% of children had reading difficulties in Grade 7. In Kindergarten, at-risk groups scored lower than not-at-risk groups on measures of word and letter recognition, phonological processing, rapid naming, working memory, and language. We also examined a small group of children who were not-at-risk in Kindergarten, but had a reading disability in Grade 7; these children did not obtain lower scores than average readers on any of our Kindergarten measures. Finally, we illustrated that the trajectory of word reading skills was generally stable, such that most children scored within the average range between Grade 1 and 7. Our results provide evidence for the long-term positive outcomes of early literacy instruction.

This study investigated the relationship among working memory, processing speed, math performance, and reactivity to stress in 83 Grade 1 children. Specifically, 39 children with math disability (MD) were compared to 44 children who are typically achieving (TA) in mathematics. It is the first study to use a physiological index of stress (salivary cortisol levels) to measure children's reactivity while completing tasks that assess the core components of MD: working memory for numbers, working memory for words, digits backward, letter number sequence, digit span forward, processing speed for numbers and words, block rotation, and math tasks. Grade 1 children with MD obtained significantly lower scores on the letter number sequence and quantitative concepts tasks. Higher levels of reactivity significantly predicted poorer performance on the working memory for numbers, working memory for words, and quantitative concepts tasks for Grade 1 children, regardless of math ability. Grade 1 children with MD and higher reactivity had significantly lower scores on the letter number sequence task than the children with MD and low reactivity. The findings suggest that high reactivity impairs performance in working memory and math tasks in Grade 1 children, and young children with high reactivity may benefit from interventions aimed at lowering anxiety in stressful situations, which may improve learning.

This study investigated the effects of a 12-week language-enriched phonological awareness instruction on 76 Hong Kong young children who were learning English as a second language. The children were assigned randomly to receive the instruction on phonological awareness skills embedded in vocabulary learning activities or comparison instruction which consisted of vocabulary learning and writing tasks but no direct instruction in phonological awareness skills. They were tested on receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness at the syllable, rhyme and phoneme levels, reading, and spelling in English before and after the program implementation. The results indicated that children who received the phonological awareness instruction performed significantly better than the comparison group on English word reading, spelling, phonological awareness at all levels and expressive vocabulary on the posttest when age, general intelligence and the pretest scores were controlled statistically. The findings suggest that phonological awareness instruction embedded in vocabulary learning activities might be beneficial to kindergarteners learning English as a second language. (Contains 4 tables and 1 footnote.)

Purpose: The main goal of this study was to examine whether the morphological structure of a child's first language determined the strength of association between morphological awareness and reading and spelling skills in English, their second language. Methods: The sample consisted of 888 Grade six students who had English as their first language and 244 English Language Learners (ELLs) who came from seven home language backgrounds: Chinese, Filipino, Germanic, Korean, Persian, Romance, and Slavic. Participants were given a series of standardized tests for word reading, reading comprehension, and spelling, and experimental measures of morphological, phonological, and syntactic awareness, as well as reading fluency and reading comprehension. Results: The results revealed that children in the ELL groups differed from the English monolingual group mostly on the oral language tasks, but their reading skills were high and equivalent to those of the monolingual group. Moreover, it was confirmed that morphological awareness is important for all aspects of reading and spelling, and its influence is independent of that of phonological awareness and syntactic awareness. Conclusion: The associations between morphological awareness and reading and spelling in a second language seem to be influenced by the morphological structure of the home language, such that the association was stronger for children whose home languages were morphologically transparent.

Reading comprehension is a multi-dimensional process that includes the reader, the text, and factors associated with the activity of reading. Most research and theories of comprehension are based primarily on research conducted with monolingual English speakers (L1). The present study was designed to investigate the cognitive and linguistic factors that have an influence on reading comprehension in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) speakers. The cognitive aspects of reading comprehension among L1 speakers and ESL speakers in the seventh grade were investigated. The performance of both groups was compared and the role of some relevant processes, including word reading, word reading fluency, phonological awareness, working memory, and morphological and syntactic awareness were assessed. Within this sample, three groups were examined: (1) children with poor comprehension (PC) in the absence of word reading difficulties (2) children with poor word reading and poor comprehension (poor readers, PR) (3) and children with both good word reading and comprehension abilities (good comprehenders, GC). The results demonstrated that a variety of cognitive processes, such as working memory and phonological, syntactic, and morphological awareness are important for reading comprehension and compromised in poor comprehenders. The GC group performed better than the PC group on all of the cognitive measures, indicating that comprehension depends on a variety of phonological, memory and linguistic processes and that adequate word recognition skill are important for reading comprehension. The prevalence of the ESL and L1 students was similar across the three reading groups. The ESL and L1 students demonstrated similar performance, indicating that the skills underlying reading comprehension are similar in the ESL and L1 students. This study demonstrated that ESL students are capable of developing word reading and reading comprehension skills that are as strong as those of their L1 peers.

This article presents an overview of replicating the French immersion model used in Canada to English immersion programs in China. It provides the Chinese context of this program highlighting the importance of English education and the defect of traditional English teaching and learning. The paper explains the borrowable features of the French immersion model which account for the attraction to the Chinese reformers. With a focused discussion on the differences between the traditional and immersion English teaching approaches, the paper argues that, to sustain an effective transplanted English immersion program, necessary modifications must be made to respond to the social and educational contextual restrictions in the "borrower" country.

The educational systems in all countries have failed to adequately address the problems of students with learning disabilities. Antisocial behaviour, homelessness, mental health problems and even suicide are a result. This article will explore the reasons for this state of affairs. One of the major reasons is excessive reliance on testing without developing a more efficient and streamlined system. Related to this excessive testing is reliance on intelligence quotient (IQ) scores. I argue and present evidence that the IQ score is unnecessary in the diagnosis of whether or not there is a learning disability. Intelligence quotient tests also do not provide useful information that can be used in the treatment of a learning disability. In addition, one of the latest, and very regressive, trends is to demand testing for "processing deficits", even though there is no evidence that processing deficits are useful for either diagnosis or remediation. One recent and promising approach, Response-to-Intervention, has been developed. This approach emphasizes early identification and intervention and remediation as soon as problems are discovered. A longitudinal study of early identification and intervention will be described. Educators have solutions to the problem of learning disabilities within their grasp. Society will benefit if these solutions are pursued. (Contains 5 figures.)

The purpose of this study was to analyze possible gender-related differences in the prevalence of dyslexia. A cross-national comparison of Spain and Guatemala was conducted. Both countries speak the same language but have a different standard of living and educational level. A second purpose of this study was to analyze the cognitive profile of Guatemalan and Spanish males and females children with dyslexia. The log-linear analysis indicated that the number of dyslexics detected was different across the countries but there were no differences as a function of gender. Similarly, there were no significant or meaningful differences between dyslexic males and females in the cognitive processes involved in reading. Therefore, gender differences do not appear to be characteristic of developmental dyslexia.

Although many children with reading difficulty (RD) are reported to struggle with mathematics, little research has empirically investigated whether this is the case for different types of RD. This study examined the mathematics skills of third graders with one of two types of RD: dyslexia (n = 18) or specific reading comprehension difficulty (n = 22), as contrasted to a comparison group (n = 247). Children's performance on arithmetic fact fluency, operations, and applied problems was assessed using standardized measures. The results indicated that children with dyslexia experienced particular difficulty with arithmetic fact fluency and operations: they were 5.60 times and 8.54 times more likely than other children to experience deficits in fact fluency and operations, respectively. Our findings related to arithmetic fact fluency were more consistent with domain-general explanations of the co-morbidity between RD and mathematics difficulty, whereas our findings related to operations were more consistent with domain-specific accounts. (Contains 5 tables.)

This longitudinal study investigated the academic and cognitive characteristics of persistent mathematics difficulty (MD-p) from first to fourth grade. Ninety-nine children were retrospectively categorized into one of three groups: MD-p, transient mathematics difficulty (MD-t), or typically developing. MD-p was defined as persistently low mathematics achievement (less than or equal to 25th percentile) in at least 2 years from first to fourth grade. The results indicated that the MD-p group was more likely than other groups to have deficits in calculation, practical problem solving, number facts, and reading. In terms of cognitive characteristics, MD-p was specifically characterized by deficits in math concepts and phonological decoding, though there was some evidence for the involvement of working memory, processing speed, and numerical reasoning.

Groups of Grade 3 children were tested on measures of word-level literacy and undertook tasks that required the ability to associate sounds with letter sequences and that involved visual, auditory and phonological-processing skills. These groups came from different language backgrounds in which the language of instruction was Arabic, Chinese, English, Hungarian or Portuguese. Similar measures were used across the groups, with tests being adapted to be appropriate for the language of the children. Findings indicated that measures of decoding and phonological-processing skills were good predictors of word reading and spelling among Arabic- and English-speaking children, but were less able to predict variability in these same early literacy skills among Chinese- and Hungarian-speaking children, and were better at predicting variability in Portuguese word reading than spelling. Results were discussed with reference to the relative transparency of the script and issues of dyslexia assessment across languages. Overall, the findings argue for the need to take account of features of the orthography used to represent a language when developing assessment procedures for a particular language and that assessment of word-level literacy skills and a phonological perspective of dyslexia may not be universally applicable across all language contexts. (Contains 4 tables.)

The relation of morphological awareness to reading and spelling skills of dyslexic children and English language learners (ELL) is investigated. The lack of reading and spelling skills is found to be significantly correlated to insensitivity to derivational morphology.

This study examined the basic literacy skills and related processes of 1st- through 4th-grade children speaking English as a 1st language (L1) and English as a 2nd language (ESL). The performances of the L1 and ESL children on phonological awareness, word and pseudoword reading, and word and pseudoword spelling tasks were highly similar. The ESL children were at an advantage with regard to lexical access but performed more poorly on verbal working memory and syntactic awareness tasks. The results suggest that the main processes underlying L1 children's basic reading ability in Grades 1 and 2, namely phonological awareness and lexical access, are of equal importance for ESL children. Phonological awareness remained the strongest predictor of word reading ability for L1 and ESL children in Grades 3 and 4. However, the processes involved in L1 and ESL word reading and spelling appeared to vary at other points. Verbal working memory and syntactic awareness were found to be of importance for the word reading and spelling abilities of L1 children but not for ESL children. Lexical access was found to be of more importance for ESL children.

This article reports on the results of a longitudinal investigation of the reading development of a sample of 824 children (406 girls, 418 boys). The sample included 689 native English-speaking (L1) children and 135 English-language learners (ELLs) representing 33 different native languages. In kindergarten and 4th grade, children's word reading, spelling, phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and working memory skills were assessed with standardized and experimental measures. In addition, word reading was assessed from kindergarten through 4th grade, and reading comprehension in 4th grade. Comparisons of reading skills between the ELLs and the L1 speakers demonstrated that despite slightly lower performance of the ELLs on several kindergarten tasks, differences at 4th grade were negligible. Fourth-grade word reading was predicted by the same kindergarten tasks for both language groups, and prediction of reading comprehension differed by only 1 task. Finally, the trajectory of word reading was nonlinear for both groups, although predictors of this trajectory differed between groups. The findings suggest that early identification models established through research with L1 speakers are appropriate for identifying ELLs at risk for reading difficulties.

Whereas the great majority of literacy research has been focused at the child level, this study examined the relationship between early literacy rates, developmental health of the population, and demographics in 23 school communities. The results showed that school-level literacy scores were related to the physical, social, and emotional maturity of the kindergarten population, as well as community demographics, including the proportion of families in each school catchment area living below the low income cutoff, the proportion of single-parent families, and the community 5-year mobility rate. Furthermore, the proportion of children at risk for literacy difficulties varied systematically by school, ranging from 0% to 44%; this risk was strongly related to developmental health and to demographics of the school community. The implications for models of early identification and corresponding intervention programs for at-risk children are discussed. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.) [Funding was also provided by the Michael Smith Foundation.]

Instruction in English as a foreign language at an early age is becoming more common worldwide even though the effects of this early instruction are not yet known. This study investigated the English and Chinese language performance of students enrolled in early English immersion in a Chinese primary school. In addition, factors that could predict successful English word recognition were investigated. There were 183 participants who were tested in both Chinese and English word identification, phonological awareness, and vocabulary, as well as English oral proficiency and letter name knowledge. The immersion students performed significantly better than the non-immersion group on measures of English vocabulary, word identification, and oral proficiency, without any detrimental effects on their Chinese character reading, which made the program, in effect, an additive bilingual system. In addition, phonological awareness and letter name knowledge proved to be strong predictors of English word identification for the immersion students, a finding that was similar to results obtained in studies of native English-speaking children. The findings have potentially useful pedagogical applications.

One goal of this longitudinal study was to examine whether the predictors of reading skills in Grade 3 would differ between English as a second language (ESL) students and native English-speaking (L1) students. Phonological processing, syntactic awareness, memory, spelling, word reading, and lexical access skills were assessed in kindergarten and in Grade 3. The results indicated that in kindergarten, the ESL group had significantly lower scores on phonological processing, syntactic awareness, spelling, and memory for sentences tasks. However, in Grade 3, the ESL group performed in a similar way to the L1 group except on the syntactic awareness task. The combination of the two kindergarten measures, memory for sentences and Oral Cloze, and the combination of phonological processing and letter identification all contributed equally to predicting the L1 students' word-reading skills. However, for ESL students, letter identification and phonological processing made much larger contributions to predicting Grade 3 reading ability. Another goal of this study was to assess the procedures used to identify reading disability in the ESL and L1 student sample. Performance on two measures--letter identification and phonological awareness in kindergarten--predicted whether students would be classified in Grade 3 as at risk or having typical reading development for the ESL and L1 groups. The ESL children developed strong reading skills, and their status as ESL speakers did not put them at risk for reading difficulties in Grade 3. ESL students were not at any particular risk for reading difficulties after 4 years in Canadian schooling with an adequate balanced literacy program.

This study examined the development of reading and reading-related skills for native and nonnative speakers of English through the first and second grades. Tasks assessing reading, phonological, and language processing were administered to 36 native English speakers (NS) and 38 children who spoke English as a second language (ELL). Both ELL and NS children showed similar patterns of growth and achievement on measures of word recognition and phonological processing. Error analyses revealed that children from both language groups used similar strategies in reading unfamiliar words. Furthermore, the same first-grade variables--pseudoword reading and phonological awareness--were important contributors to reading skill for children from both language groups. Therefore, the findings from this sample suggested that word recognition in English develops in a similar way for NS and ELL children from middle-class backgrounds.

This study investigated the influence of cognitive and linguistic skills on the reading comprehension performance of a group of learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The study also compared the reading comprehension performance of grade 4 children who entered kindergarten with little or no experience with English (ESL) to that of a group of native English speakers. Examiners administered various tasks of reading, language, and memory to the children in the study (n=480). The sample included three comprehension groups: (1) children with poor comprehension in the absence of word reading difficulties (Poor Comprehenders; PC), (2) children with poor word reading and poor comprehension (Poor word Recognition and comprehenders; PR), and (3) children with good word reading and comprehension abilities (Good Comprehenders; GC). Due to the small sample size of PR reader group, no comparative analyses were conducted. However, the results indicated that within the GC and PC groups there were no differences between the ESL and L1 children on measures of reading and phonological processing. Further, within the GC and PC groups, on measures of syntactic awareness and verbal working memory, the ESL speakers performed at significantly lower levels than the L1 speakers.

This study examined the effects of extra time on the reading comprehension performance of a heterogeneous group of adults with reading disabilities. Sixty-four adults participated. A clinic that assesses learning disabilities identified 22 as reading disabled, and 42 as normal readers. The 64 adults took a reading comprehension test under both timed and untimed conditions. Other skills measured included vocabulary, word reading, non-word reading, spelling, arithmetic, and short-term memory. Under timed conditions, there were significant differences between the participants with reading disabilities and the normally achieving participants. All of the reading disabled participants in the present study benefited from extra time, but the normally achieving readers performed similarly under the timed and untimed conditions. Further, in the untimed condition, the performance of the individuals with a less severe reading disability was not significantly different that of the Average readers. The study suggests that extra time during testing is an appropriate accommodation to help individuals begin to compensate for reading disabilities.

This study presents a longitudinal examination of the development of reading and reading-related skills of 22 Grade 4 children identified as having reading disabilities (RD) who had been followed since kindergarten. The analyses were conducted to investigate the patterns of emergence of RD as well as reading ability and risk status across the 5 years. The findings of the study are presented with an examination of the trajectories of the children with RD as compared to Grade 4 typical readers (matched for grade, gender, language status, and school) with a similar profile on literacy skills in kindergarten. The results demonstrate the heterogeneous nature of the trajectory of RD in school-age children; although many of the children with RD were at risk in kindergarten, there was a subsample who did not demonstrate reading and phonological difficulties until the third and fourth grades.

The double-deficit hypothesis of developmental dyslexia proposes that deficits in phonological processing and naming speed represent independent sources of dysfunction in dyslexia. The present article is a review of the evidence for the double-deficit hypothesis, including a discussion of recent findings related to the hypothesis. Studies in this area have been characterized by variability in methodology--how dyslexia is defined and identified, and how dyslexia subtypes are classified. Such variability sets limitations on the extent to which conclusions may be drawn with respect to the double-deficit hypothesis. Furthermore, the literature is complicated by the persistent finding that measures of phonological processing and naming speed are significantly correlated, resulting in a statistical artifact that makes it difficult to disentangle the influence of naming speed from that of phonological processing. Longitudinal and intervention studies of the double-deficit hypothesis are needed to accumulate evidence that investigates a naming speed deficit that is independent of a phonological deficit for readers with dyslexia. The existing evidence does not support a persistent core deficit in naming speed for readers with dyslexia.

The purpose of this article is to review published studies of the English literacy of children in Canada who are English language learners (ELLs) with the goal of understanding the reading development of ELLs and characteristics of reading disabilities (RD) in this population. Phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and working memory of ELLs with and without RD were compared to that of native English-speaking (L1) students with and without RD. Our review found that ELLs with RD experienced reading difficulties similar to those of L1 students with RD. On the basis of the evidence, ELLs are not at greater risk for RD than their native English-speaking peers. We propose that the diagnosis of a reading disability can be made in a similar manner in both ELL and L1 students.

This commentary reviews some of the issues involved in the definition of reading disability and demonstrates how definitions can influence the conclusions reached by a review. In particular, the discrepancy definition of reading disability is shown to be logically flawed. Data from a large unbiased sample show that there are no significant differences between boys and girls in the incidence of reading difficulties.

This longitudinal study examined the relationship between schooling, literacy development, and socioeconomic context, as reflected by a composite measure of socioeconomic status (SES). Reading, spelling, and phonological abilities were assessed from kindergarten to grade three in Canadian children in a school district with intensive literacy activities. In kindergarten, there were significant associations between SES and all the abilities assessed but these associations declined systematically to non-significant levels by grade three. Risk and prevalence of reading failure also decreased with more schooling. The results suggest that the attenuation of the association between SES and literacy-related skills, and the progressive reduction of the risk for reading failure, were positive outcomes associated with the literacy school program, especially in the early grades.