Early reading development in children at family risk for dyslexia

In a S-year longitudinal study, middle- to upper-middle-class preschool chi ldren at high family risk (HR group, N = 67) and low family risk (LR group, N = 57) for dyslexia (or reading disability, RD), were evaluated yearly fr om before kindergarten to the end of second grade. Both phonological proces sing and literacy skills were tested at each of four time points. Consisten t with the well-known familiarity of RD, 34% of the HR group compared with 67% of the LR group became RD. Participants who became RD showed deficits i n both implicit and explicit phonological processing skills at all four tim e points, clearly indicating a broader phonological deficit than is often f ound at older ages. The predictors of literacy skill did not vary by risk g roup. Both risk groups underwent a similar developmental shift from letter- name knowledge to phoneme awareness as the main predictor of later literacy skill. This shift, however, occurred 2 years later in the HR group. Famili al risk was continuous rather than discrete because HR children who did not become RD performed worse than LR non-RD children on some phonological and literacy measures. Finally, later RD could be predicted with moderate accu racy at age 5 years, with the strongest predictor being letter-name knowled ge.