title: Dyslexia: a validation of the concept at two age levels.
abstract: The 144 participants were administered tasks with a demonstrated relationship to reading. Both older students (8 to 10 years old) and younger students (6 to 7 years old) included three groups of poor readers (matched on word reading but differing in the discrepancy from expected reading level) and age-matched average readers. Older poor readers also had a control group of reading-matched younger subjects. The study provided no support for the concept of dyslexia at age 6 to 7 years. Among older participants there was support for the concept of dyslexia as a phonological deficit and of nondiscrepant garden-variety poor reading as a developmental lag. More discrepant participants with dyslexia exhibited orthographic and serial naming-speed deficits, as well as phonological deficits, and were a distinctive dyslexic group. Less discrepant participants with dyslexia were more similar to garden-variety poor readers than to the more discrepant participants with dyslexia.
authors.affiliation: Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: N A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Badian
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D014888:Wechsler Scales