Parental literacy predicts children's literacy: a longitudinal family-risk study.
This family-risk (FR) study examined whether the literacy skills of parents with dyslexia are predictive of the literacy skills of their offspring. We report data from 31 child-parent dyads where both had dyslexia (FR-D) and 68 dyads where the child did not have dyslexia (FR-ND). Findings supported the differences in liability of FR children with and without dyslexia: the parents of the FR-D children had more severe difficulties in pseudoword reading and spelling accuracy, in rapid word recognition, and in text reading fluency than the parents of the FR-ND children. Finally, parental skills were found to be significant predictors of children's Grade 3 reading and spelling. Parental skills predicted children's reading and spelling accuracy even after controlling for children's preschool skills. Our findings suggest that the literacy skills of a parent with dyslexia might be valuable in assessing early on their child's liability to dyslexia.
Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. minna.p.torppa@jyu.fi
Minna
M
Torppa
Kenneth
K
Eklund
Elsje
E
van Bergen
Heikki
H
Lyytinen
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000235:genetics* / Q000523:psychology; D005192:Family Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D010700:Phonetics; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011932:Reading; D012307:Risk Factors; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary; D014956:Writing