Persistence of dyslexia: The Connecticut Longitudinal Study at Adolescence

Objective. The outcome in adolescence of children diagnosed as dyslexic dur ing the early years of school was examined in children prospectively identi fied in childhood and continuously followed to young adulthood. This sample offers a unique opportunity to investigate a prospectively identified samp le of adolescents for whom there is no question of the childhood diagnosis and in whom highly analytic measures of reading and language can be adminis tered in adolescence. Design. Children were recruited from the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, a cohort of 445 children representative of those children entering public kin dergarten in Connecticut in 1983. Two groups were selected when the childre n were in grade 9: children who met criteria for persistent reading disabil ity in grades 2 through 6 (persistently poor readers [PPR]; n = 21) and a c omparison group of nondisabled children, subdivided into average readers (n = 35) and superior readers (n = 39). In grade 9, each child received a com prehensive assessment of academic, language, and other cognitive skills. Results. Measures of phonological awareness (but not orthographic awareness ) were most significant in differentiating the 3 reading groups, with small er contributions from measures of word finding and digit-span. Academic mea sures that best separated good from poor readers were decoding and spelling , whereas measures of math and reading comprehension did not. Measures of p honological awareness, followed next by teacher rating of academic skills w ere the best predictors of decoding, reading rate, and reading accuracy. In contrast, the best predictor of reading comprehension was word finding, wi th digit span and socioeconomic status also contributing significantly. Usi ng a growth curve model (quadratic model of growth to a plateau) all 3 grou ps demonstrated similar patterns of growth over time, with the superior gro up outperforming the average group, and the average group outperforming the PPR group. There was no evidence that the children in the PPR group catch up in their reading skills. Conclusions. Deficits in phonological coding continue to characterize dysle xic readers even in adolescence; performance on phonological processing mea sures contributes most to discriminating dyslexic and average readers, and average and superior readers as well. These data support and extend the fin dings of previous investigators indicating the continuing contribution of p honological processing to decoding words, reading rate, and accuracy and sp elling. Children with dyslexia neither spontaneously remit nor do they demo nstrate a lag mechanism for catching up in the development of reading skill s. In adolescents, the rate of reading as well as facility with spelling ma y be most useful clinically in differentiating average from poor readers.