Browsing by Author "Mäkelä, Johanna"

Developmental dyslexia is a common disorder and has been linked to issues such as longer periods of unemployment and poorer academic achievement. Difficulties in reading and writing skills, that are central to dyslexia, are related to verbal working memory. However, more research is needed for the challenges to be identified as early as possible and adequate support could be provided. The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate how early verbal working memory develops and whether it is connected to language skills. The study included children at hereditary risk of dyslexia (n=51) and a control group (n=37), whose verbal working memory was assessed at two years of age. Verbal working memory was reassessed at five years of age, along with language skill assessment. The relationship between working memory measured at the age of two years and working memory measured at the age of five years and linguistic abilities was analysed using Pearson's correlation coefficient. The differences between the risk group and the control group were evaluated with Student's t-tests. Against the hypothesis, the results showed no association between the verbal working memory at the age of two years and the verbal working memory at the age of five years. However, verbal working memory was connected to language skills. It was found that the control group's verbal working memory assessed at the age of two was only related to the language skills at the age of five. In the risk group, verbal working memory assessed at the age of five was only related to the language skills assessed at the same age. The results suggest that the dyslexia risk group has poorer early verbal working memory than the control group at the age of two. More research is still needed, but the results support that verbal working memory is related to dyslexia risk. Assessment methods for early verbal working memory should be developed so challenges can be identified, and early support can be offered.