title: Family risk of dyslexia is continuous: individual differences in the precursors of reading skill.
abstract: The development of 56 children at family risk of dyslexia was followed from the age of 3 years, 9 months to 8 years. In the high-risk group, 66% had reading disabilities at age 8 years compared with 13% in a control group from similar, middle-class backgrounds. However, the family risk of dyslexia was continuous, and high-risk children who did not fulfil criteria for reading impairment at 8 years performed as poorly at age 6 as did high-risk impaired children on tests of grapheme-phoneme knowledge. The findings are interpreted within an interactive model of reading development in which problems in establishing a phonological pathway in dyslexic families may be compensated early by children who have strong language skills.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, United Kingdom. MJS19@york.ac.uk
authors.forename: Margaret J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Snowling
authors.forename: Alison
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gallagher
authors.forename: Uta
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Frith
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000235:genetics; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010700:Phonetics; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors