Browsing by Subject "tekninen lukutaito"

Aims: Delays in early language development are quite common and for most children transient. Recognizing a delay is nevertheless important as it might also be the first sign of more persistent language difficulties that can lead to reading difficulties at school age. The most widely researched form of a reading difficulty is dyslexia which has a strong genetic basis. Among Finnish speaking people dyslexia typically appears as problems in reading fluency. Difficulties in reading can also be due to primarily reading comprehension problems that often stem from broader oral language difficulties. The purpose of this study was to examine the childhood language skills and adolescent reading skills of Finnish speaking children with delayed early language development and familial risk for dyslexia. Furthermore, this study examined how an early language delay predicts adolescent reading difficulties in children with familial risk for dyslexia. Method: The research data were part of the data collected in Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The participants were divided into groups based on their early language skills. Children with delayed early expressive skills but age-equivalent receptive skills (VKK1-group, n=10) and children with delay in both receptive and expressive skills (VKK2-group, n=12) were compared to age-matched children whose early language skills were age-equivalent and who either had familial risk for dyslexia (LR-group, n=83) or did not have the risk (ER-group, n=79). Group differences in language skills between the ages 1.5–5.5 years and reading skills (decoding and functional literacy) between the ages 14–15 years were studied with One-Way and Mixed-Design ANOVAs. The connection between language delay and adolescent reading difficulties was examined using cross-tabulation and the chi-squared test. Results and conclusions: VKK1-group had weaker early expressive skills than both control groups. Later language skills in VKK1-group were at single age points weaker than in ER-group. In adolescence, VKK1-group was weaker than ER-group in reading fluency. VKK2-group was weaker than controls in all expressive and receptive language skills throughout the studied age period and partly weaker than VKK1-group. VKK2-group was weaker than ER-group in reading accuracy and weaker than all other groups in functional literacy. The prevalence of dyslexia did not deviate from expectation in either of the VKK-groups or in LR-group. Thus, delayed language development does not seem to further increase the risk for adolescent dyslexia in children with familial risk for dyslexia. The prevalence of poor functional literacy deviated significantly from expectation in VKK2-group. This indicates that an early delay in both expressive and receptive language development together with familial risk for dyslexia might predict functional reading difficulties in adolescence. However, only an expressive delay with familial risk does not seem to increase the risk for poor functional literacy.