The risk of dyslexia : Pre-literacy skills and abilities and literacy development in high-risk groups
Abstract
According to contemporary research, there is a group of children at higher risk of literacy difficulties. It is widely accepted today that these children at risk of dyslexia are children with specific language impairment and children with hereditary predisposition of dyslexia.
Both of these groups were examined by a longitudinal project ELDEL-WP2 and following project GAUK, which are the basis for this habilitation thesis. The publication has several independent parts, the first focuses on the identification of children at family risk of dyslexia and children with specific language impairment.
The thesis then deals with developmental profiles of pre-literacy skills and abilities that are believed to be crucial for successful development of reading and writing skills at the beginning of education. Language and cognitive skills, as well as key pre-literacy abilities are in the centre of the attention in accordance to the psycholinguistic concept of literacy.
The results have pointed out the dynamics of language and cognitive skills development, as well as pre-literacy skills of all the research groups. The group of children, which was endangered the most by the possibility of literacy problems, was the group of children with the specific language impairment.
Children at family risk of dyslexia generally achieved lower scores than the children with typical development; however the differences were not significant. Despite of all that, the children at family risk of dyslexia appears to be at higher risk of literacy problems, than the children with typical development, specifically at the end of the 1st grade and even more during the 3rd grade.
Achieved results are confronted and put into context with results in the Czech and abroad research literature. Methodological limits are also discussed.