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Literacy acquisition is a complex process with genetic and environmental factors influencing cognitive and neural processes associated with reading. Previous research identified factors that predict word reading fluency (WRF), including phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and speech-in-noise perception (SPIN). Recent theoretical accounts suggest dynamic interactions between these factors and reading, but direct investigations of such dynamics are lacking. Here, we investigated the dynamic effect of phonological processing and speech perception on WRF. More specifically, we evaluated the dynamic influence of PA, RAN, and SPIN measured in kindergarten (the year prior to formal reading instruction), first grade (the first year of formal reading instruction) and second grade on WRF in second and third grade. We also assessed the effect of an indirect proxy of family risk for reading difficulties using a parental questionnaire (Adult Reading History Questionnaire, ARHQ). We applied path modeling in a longitudinal sample of 162 Dutch-speaking children of whom the majority was selected to have an increased family and/or cognitive risk for dyslexia. We showed that parental ARHQ had a significant effect on WRF, RAN and SPIN, but unexpectedly not on PA. We also found effects of RAN and PA directly on WRF that were limited to first and second grade respectively, in contrast to previous research reporting pre-reading PA effects and prolonged RAN effects throughout reading acquisition. Our study provides important new insights into early prediction of later word reading abilities and into the optimal time window to target a specific reading-related subskill during intervention.

Background: Aphasia can affect the communication between the person with aphasia (PWA) and the communication partner (CP). It is therefore necessary to support both the PWA and their CPs. Communication partner training (CPT) focuses on training communication between dyads of whom one person has aphasia. Although there is increasing evidence supporting CPT as an effective intervention to improve communication and reduce the psychosocial consequences of stroke, implementation in clinical practice remains limited. Aim: To understand the mechanisms behind the practice--evidence gap currently hindering CPT implementation, this study investigated the role of (1) education, (2) concept knowledge, (3) work setting and (4) clinical experience in CPT. Methods & Procedures: Flemish speech and language therapists (SLTs) clinically involved in aphasia rehabilitation were surveyed online regarding CPT. Statistical analyses include descriptive statistics to report survey results and non-parametric group comparisons to investigate the role of the four variables on CPT. Outcomes & Results: In this study 72 SLTs were included, of whom 73.61% indicated they deliver CPT but of whom only 43.10% indicated CP presence during therapy. The most frequently identified barriers to CPT delivery were lack of time and CPT-specific knowledge. Other barriers were lack of resources, work setting dependent factors, PWA or CP dependent factors, individual therapy to the PWA being of higher priority, existing CPT methods and interventions being perceived as unclear and feeling uncertain about CPT delivery. Concerning the role of the four variables on CPT delivery, neither education nor concept knowledge had a significant effect on CPT delivery. Work setting and clinical experience did, however, influence CPT delivery. More specifically, CPT delivery and CP presence were higher in the private practice (chronic phase) compared to the other three settings and experienced SLTs deliver CPT more often compared with less experienced SLTs. Conclusions & Implications: To reduce the practice-evidence gap, we suggest prioritising the two most frequently identified barriers, that is, lack of time and CPT-specific knowledge. To overcome the time barrier in CPT, we propose implementing automated natural speech analysis to reduce the workload. To enhance CPT-specific knowledge, speech and language therapy curricula should provide more in-depth theory and hands-on practice for CPT. In addition, increased awareness about CPT-specific methods is needed to further support clinical practice.

Dyslexia has frequently been related to atypical auditory temporal processing and speech perception. Results of studies emphasizing speech onset cues and reinforcing the temporal structure of the speech envelope, that is, envelope enhancement (EE), demonstrated reduced speech perception deficits in individuals with dyslexia. The use of this strategy as auditory intervention might thus reduce some of the deficits related to dyslexia. Importantly, reading-skill interventions are most effective when they are provided during kindergarten and first grade. Hence, we provided a tablet-based 12-week auditory and phonics-based intervention to pre-readers at cognitive risk for dyslexia and investigated the effect on auditory temporal processing with a rise time discrimination (RTD) task. Ninety-one pre-readers at cognitive risk for dyslexia (aged 5-6) were assigned to two groups receiving a phonics-based intervention and playing a story listening game either with (n = 31) or without (n = 31) EE or a third group playing control games and listening to non-enhanced stories (n = 29). RTD was measured directly before, directly after and 1 year after the intervention. While the groups listening to non-enhanced stories mainly improved after the intervention during first grade, the group listening to enhanced stories improved during the intervention in kindergarten and subsequently remained stable during first grade. Hence, an EE intervention improves auditory processing skills important for the development of phonological skills. This occurred before the onset of reading instruction, preceding the maturational improvement of these skills, hence potentially giving at risk children a head start when learning to read. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0BfT4dGXNA

The importance of (inherited) genetic impact in reading development is well established. De novo mutation is another important contributor that is recently gathering interest as a major liability of neurodevelopmental disorders, but has been neglected in reading research to date. Paternal age at childbirth (PatAGE) is known as the most prominent risk factor for de novo mutation, which has been repeatedly shown by molecular genetic studies. As one of the first efforts, we performed a preliminary investigation of the relationship between PatAGE, offspring's reading, and brain structure in a longitudinal neuroimaging study following 51 children from kindergarten through third grade. The results showed that greater PatAGE was significantly associated with worse reading, explaining an additional 9.5% of the variance after controlling for a number of confounds-including familial factors and cognitive-linguistic reading precursors. Moreover, this effect was mediated by volumetric maturation of the left posterior thalamus from ages 5 to 8. Complementary analyses indicated the PatAGE-related thalamic region was most likely located in the pulvinar nuclei and related to the dorsal attention network by using brain atlases, public datasets, and offspring's diffusion imaging data. Altogether, these findings provide novel insights into neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the PatAGE effect on reading acquisition during its earliest phase and suggest promising areas of future research.

Research demonstrated that a dyslexia diagnosis is mainly given after the most effective time for intervention has passed, referred to as the dyslexia paradox. Although some pre-reading cognitive measures have been found to be strong predictors of early literacy acquisition, i.e., phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge (LK), and rapid automatized naming (RAN), more insight in the variability of pre-reading profiles might be of great importance for early identification of children who have an elevated risk for developing dyslexia and to provide tailor-made interventions. To address this issue, this study used a latent profile analysis (LPA) to disentangle different pre-reading profiles in a sample of 1091 Dutch-speaking kindergartners. Four profiles emerged: high performers (16.50%), average performers (40.24%), below-average performers with average IQ (25.57%), and below-average performers with below-average IQ (17.69%). These results suggested two at-risk profiles diverging in IQ, which are presumably more likely to develop dyslexia later on. Although below-average profiles differed significantly in rapid naming and IQ, no clear evidence for the double-deficit theory was found in Dutch-speaking kindergartners. Educational level and reading history of the parents appeared to be predictive for children's classification membership. Our results point towards the heterogeneity that is already present in kindergartners and the possibility to identify at-risk profiles prior to reading instruction, which may be the foundation for earlier targeted interventions. However, more extended research is needed to determine the stability of these profiles across time and across different languages.

There is an ongoing debate whether phonological deficits in dyslexics should be attributed to (a) less specified representations of speech sounds, like suggested by studies in young children with a familial risk for dyslexia, or (b) to an impaired access to these phonemic representations, as suggested by studies in adults with dyslexia. These conflicting findings are rooted in between study differences in sample characteristics and/or testing techniques. The current study uses the same multivariate functional MRI (fMRI) approach as previously used in adults with dyslexia to investigate phonemic representations in 30 beginning readers with a familial risk and 24 beginning readers without a familial risk of dyslexia, of whom 20 were later retrospectively classified as dyslexic. Based on fMRI response patterns evoked by listening to different utterances of /bA/ and /dA/ sounds, multivoxel analyses indicate that the underlying activation patterns of the two phonemes were distinct in children with a low family risk but not in children with high family risk. However, no group differences were observed between children that were later classified as typical versus dyslexic readers, regardless of their family risk status, indicating that poor phonemic representations constitute a risk for dyslexia but are not sufficient to result in reading problems. We hypothesize that poor phonemic representations are trait (family risk) and not state (dyslexia) dependent, and that representational deficits only lead to reading difficulties when they are present in conjunction with other neuroanatomical or--functional deficits.

Children's white matter development is driven by experience, yet it remains poorly understood how it is shaped by attending formal education. A small number of studies compared children before and after the start of formal schooling to understand this, yet they do not allow to separate maturational effects from schooling‐related effects. A clever way to (quasi‐)experimentally address this issue is the longitudinal school cut‐off design, which compares children who are similar in age but differ in schooling (because they are born right before or after the cut‐off date for school entry). We used for the first time such a longitudinal school cut‐off design to experimentally investigate the effect of schooling on children's white matter networks. We compared "young" first graders (schooling group, n = 34; Mage = 68 months; 20 girls) and "old" preschoolers (non‐schooling group, n = 33; Mage = 66 months; 18 girls) that were similar in age but differed in the amount of formal instruction they received. Our study revealed that changes in fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity in five a priori selected white matter tracts during the transition from preschool to primary school were predominantly driven by age‐related maturation. We did not find specific schooling effects on white matter, despite their strong presence for early reading and early arithmetic skills. The present study is the first to disentangle the effects of age‐related maturation and schooling on white matter within a longitudinal cohort of 5‐year‐old preschoolers. Research Highlights: White matter tracts that have been associated with reading and arithmetic may be susceptible to experience‐dependent neuroplasticity when children learn to read and calculate.This longitudinal study used the school cut‐off design to isolate schooling‐induced from coinciding maturational influences on children's white matter development.White matter changes during the transition from preschool to primary school are predominantly driven by age‐related maturation and not by schooling effects.Strong effects of schooling on behavior were shown for early reading and early arithmetic, but not for verbal ability and spatial ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical learning has been proposed to underlie the developmental transition during infancy from allophonic to phonemic speech sound perception. Based on this, it can be hypothesized that in dyslexic individuals, core phonemic representation deficits arise from reduced sensitivity to the statistical distribution of sounds. This study aims to investigate (a) whether statistical learning contributes to the construction of phonemic representations in typical readers, and (b) whether deficits in statistical learning underlie dyslexia. Fifty-eight children performed an identification task of a non-native phonetic contrast, before and after exposure to the sounds of the continuum. Our results suggest that the statistical distribution of the presented sounds implicitly enhanced the formation of phonemic representations and that dyslexic readers make less use of the statistical cues embedded in oral language, resulting in less distinct phonemic categories and thus a higher risk for failing to establish robust connections between these and written language.

The neurobiological substrates that cause people with dyslexia to experience difficulty in acquiring accurate and fluent reading skills are still largely unknown. Although structural and functional brain anomalies associated with dyslexia have been reported in adults and school-age children, these anomalies may represent differences in reading experience rather than the etiology of dyslexia. Conducting MRI studies of pre-readers at risk for dyslexia is one approach that enables us to identify brain alterations that exist before differences in reading experience emerge. The current review summarizes MRI studies that examine brain differences associated with risk for dyslexia in children before reading instruction and meta-analyzes these studies. In order to link these findings with current etiological theories of dyslexia, we focus on studies that take a modular perspective rather than a network approach. Although some of the observed differences in pre-readers at risk for dyslexia may still be shaped by language experiences during the first years of life, such studies underscore the existence of reading-related brain anomalies prior to reading onset and could eventually lead to earlier and more precise diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia.

This study examined whether variations in brain development between kindergarten and Grade 3 predicted individual differences in reading ability at Grade 3. Structural MRI measurements indicated that increases in the volume of two left temporo-parietal white matter clusters are unique predictors of reading outcomes above and beyond family history, socioeconomic status, and cognitive and preliteracy measures at baseline. Using diffusion MRI, we identified the left arcuate fasciculus and superior corona radiata as key fibers within the two clusters. Bias-free regression analyses using regions of interest from prior literature revealed that volume changes in temporo-parietal white matter, together with preliteracy measures, predicted 56% of the variance in reading outcomes. Our findings demonstrate the important contribution of developmental differences in areas of left dorsal white matter, often implicated in phonological processing, as a sensitive early biomarker for later reading abilities, and by extension, reading difficulties.