Reading Age

Children who have poor visual special attention before they learn to read are more likely to develop dyslexia than their peers, say researchers. Source: MedWire News - Pediatrics [Link] [Cache]

Conclusion: The behavioral and electrophysiological results demonstrate impaired categorical perception of lexical tones in Chinese children with dyslexia. Our findings support the hypothesis that children affected by dyslexia have a general deficit in categorical perception of speech, which generalizes to nonalphabetic languages at the suprasegmental level. Source: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry [Link] [Cache]

For children with dyslexia, the trouble begins even before they start reading and for reasons that don't necessarily reflect other language skills. That's according to a report published online in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that for the first time reveals a causal connection between early problems with visual attention and a later diagnosis of dyslexia... [Link] [Cache]

For children with dyslexia, the trouble begins even before they start reading and for reasons that don't necessarily reflect other language skills. Source: Disabled World MedWorm Sponsor Message: Have a look at The Neurology Daily, the new neurology portal driven by MedWorm, with all the latest neurology news and research updated daily. [Link] [Cache]

How do we have insights, and where does inspiration come from? Jonah Lehrer goes inside Bob Dylan's brain to find outBob Dylan looks bored. It's May 1965 and he's slumped in an armchair at the Savoy hotel in London. The camera filming the documentary Don't Look Back, about Dylan's tour, turns away – Dylan's weariness feels like an accusation – and starts to pan around the room, capturing the ragged entourage of folkies and groupies following the singer on the final week of his European tour.For the previous four months, Dylan had been struggling to maintain a gruelling performance schedule. ... [Link] [Cache]

Title: Study Suggests Treating Dyslexia Before Kids Learn to ReadCategory: Health NewsCreated: 4/5/2012 2:05:00 PMLast Editorial Review: 4/6/2012 12:00:00 AM Source: MedicineNet Kids Health General [Link] [Cache]

This article reviews our understanding of reading disorders in children and relates it to current proposals for their classification in DSM‐5. There are two different, commonly occurring, forms of reading disorder in children which arise from different underlying language difficulties. Dyslexia as defined in DSM‐5 , or decoding difficulty, refers to children who have difficulty in mastering the relationships between the spelling patterns of words and their pronunciations. These children typically read aloud inaccurately and slowly, and experience additional problems with spelling. Dyslexia appears to arise principally from a weakness in phonological speech sound skills, and there is good evidence ... [Link] [Cache]

This study for the first time reveals a causal connection between early problems with visual attention and a later diagnosis of dyslexia. Source: ScienceDaily Headlines [Link] [Cache]

The learning disability is linked to problems with visual attention, researchers contend Source: The Doctors Lounge - Neurology MedWorm Sponsor Message: Have a look at The Neurology Daily, the new neurology portal driven by MedWorm, with all the latest neurology news and research updated daily. [Link] [Cache]

Ecologically relevant stimuli are rarely used in scientific studies because they are difficult to control. Instead, researchers employ simple stimuli with sharp boundaries in space and time . Here, we explore how the rhythmogram can be used to provide much needed rigorous control of natural continuous stimuli like music and speech. The analysis correlates important features in the time course of stimuli with corresponding features in brain activations elicited by the same stimuli. Correlating the identified regularities of the stimulus time course with the features extracted from the activations of each voxel of a tomographic analysis of brain activity provides ... [Link] [Cache]

The Happy Days star, 66, on being diagnosed with dyslexia in his thirties, going from almost blindness to 20-20 vision and why he's an optimist. Source: the Mail online | Health [Link] [Cache]

In this study, we evaluated graphophonemic and graphosyllabic processes using, in each case, two different tasks varying in the degree of cognitive constraint associated with the task CC- vs CC+ . Twenty 11 year-old dyslexic students were compared with younger normal-readers of the same reading level RA, n = 26 and to normal-readers of the same age CA, n = 24 . Two variables were considered in the analyses: accuracy and response latency. Results show that dyslexic readers do process written items at the graphophonological level. Also, results indicate main effects of task CC- vs CC+ , time T1 vs ... [Link] [Cache]

Poor parallel letter‐string processing in developmental dyslexia was taken as evidence of poor visual attention VA span, that is, a limitation of visual attentional resources that affects multi‐character processing. However, the use of letter stimuli in oral report tasks was challenged on its capacity to highlight a VA span disorder. In particular, report of poor letter/digit‐string processing but preserved symbol‐string processing was viewed as evidence of poor visual‐to‐phonology code mapping, in line with the phonological theory of developmental dyslexia. We assessed here the visual‐to‐phonological‐code mapping disorder hypothesis. In Experiment 1, letter‐string, digit‐string and colour‐string processing was assessed to disentangle a ... [Link] [Cache]

Phonological awareness, knowledge that speech is composed of syllables and phonemes, is critical for learning to read. Phonological awareness precedes and predicts successful transition from language to literacy, and weakness in phonological awareness is a leading cause of dyslexia, but the brain basis of phonological awareness for spoken language in children is unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural correlates of phonological awareness using an auditory word-rhyming task in children who were typical readers or who had dyslexia ages 7–13 and a younger group of kindergarteners ages 5–6 . Typically developing children, but not children with ... [Link] [Cache]

The purpose of this study was to examine if children with dyslexia learning to read a consistent orthography Greek experience auditory and visual processing deficits and if these deficits are associated with phonological awareness, rapid naming speed and orthographic processing. We administered measures of general cognitive ability, phonological awareness, orthographic processing, short‐term memory, rapid automatized naming, auditory and visual processing, and reading fluency to 21 Grade 6 children with dyslexia, 21 chronological age‐matched controls and 20 Grade 3 reading age‐matched controls. The results indicated that the children with dyslexia did not experience auditory processing deficits, but about half of them ... [Link] [Cache]

This study demonstrates the utility of regional DTI measurements of the CC in understanding the neurobiology of reading disorders. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Validated diffusion tensor imaging DTI ‐based segmentation methods A were applied to the midsagittal corpus callosum CC of 11 healthy typically developing readers, TDR , 24 dyslexic DX and 15 age‐matched children with fluency and comprehension difficulties CF B . Significant differences were noted in posterior CC areas C and corresponding DTI metrics, such as fractional anisotropy FA D and radial diffusivity, in which correlations with reading scores were also noted E . Our ... [Link] [Cache]

Authors: Steinbrink C, Groth K, Lachmann T, Riecker A Abstract This fMRI study investigated phonological vs. auditory temporal processing in developmental dyslexia by means of a German vowel length discrimination paradigm Groth, Lachmann, Riecker, Muthmann, & Steinbrink, 2011 . Behavioral and fMRI data were collected from dyslexics and controls while performing same-different judgments of vowel duration in two experimental conditions. In the temporal, but not in the phonological condition, hemodynamic brain activation was observed bilaterally within the anterior insular cortices in both groups and within the left inferior frontal gyrus IFG in controls, indicating that the left IFG and the ... [Link] [Cache]

Conclusion: The unique characteristics and experiences of the college population of individuals with ADHD and/or dyslexia are discussed relative to the general adult population with these disorders. Source: Journal of Attention Disorders [Link] [Cache]

Ecologically relevant stimuli are rarely used in scientific studies because they are difficult to control. Instead, researchers employ simple stimuli with sharp boundaries in space and time . Here, we explore how the rhythmogram can be used to provide much needed rigorous control of natural continuous stimuli like music and speech. The analysis correlates important features in the time course of stimuli with corresponding features in brain activations elicited by the same stimuli. Correlating the identified regularities of the stimulus time course with the features extracted from the activations of each voxel of a tomographic analysis of brain activity provides ... [Link] [Cache]

In order to better understand the nature of verbal short‐term memory STM deficits in dyslexic children, the present study used the distinction between item and serial order retention capacities in STM tasks. According to recent STM models, storage of verbal item information depends very directly upon the richness of underlying phonological and semantic representations. On the other hand, storage of serial order information appears to reflect a language‐independent system. Hence, if there is a fundamental STM deficit in dyslexia that is not to be explained only by the poor phonological processing abilities that characterize dyslexia, then difficulties in serial order ... [Link] [Cache]

Conclusion: We show that the expression of DYX1C1 in breast cancer is associated with several clinicopathological parameters and that loss of DYX1C1 correlates with a more aggressive disease, in turn indicating that DYX1C1 is a potential prognostic biomarker in breast cancer. Source: BMC Cancer [Link] [Cache]

Parameters of a formal working-memory model were estimated for verbal and spatial memory updating of children. The model proposes interference though feature overwriting and through confusion of whole elements as the primary cause of working-memory capacity limits. We tested 2 age groups each containing 1 group of normal intelligence and 1 deficit group. For young children the deficit was developmental dyslexia; for older children it was a general learning difficulty. The interference model predicts less interference through overwriting but more through confusion of whole elements for the dyslexic children than for their age-matched controls. Older children exhibited less interference through ... [Link] [Cache]

Developmental dyslexia, which manifests as difficulty with reading, can have long-lasting and detrimental effects on a child's experience with education, with echoes that persist long into adulthood. Raschle et al. … [Read more] Source: Editors' Choice [Link] [Cache]

Diffusion tensor imaging tractography is a structural magnetic resonance imaging technique allowing reconstruction and assessment of the integrity of three dimensional white matter tracts, as indexed by their fractional anisotropy. It is assumed that the left arcuate fasciculus plays a crucial role for reading development, as it connects two regions of the reading network, the left temporoparietal region and the left inferior frontal gyrus, for which atypical functional activation and lower fractional anisotropy values have been reported in dyslexic readers. In addition, we explored the potential role of the left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, which might connect a third region of ... [Link] [Cache]

Florida State University If you can read this sentence with ease, consider yourself fortunate: millions of Americans with dyslexia cannot. In the hope of improving the lives of those struggling readers, a team of experts at Florida State University is working to better understand and diagnose dyslexia and other learning disabilities with a new, $8.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Source: EurekAlert! - Social and Behavioral Science MedWorm Sponsor Message: Have a look at The Neurology Daily, the new neurology portal driven by MedWorm, with all the latest neurology news and research updated daily. [Link] [Cache]