title: Does long time spending on the electronic devices affect the reading abilities? A cross-sectional study among Chinese school-aged children.
abstract: Home literacy environment (HLE) is one of most important modifiable risk factors to dyslexia. With the development in technology, we include the electronic devices usage at home, such as computers and televisions, to the definition of HLE and investigate its impact on dyslexia based on the on-going project of Tongji's Reading Environment and Dyslexia Study. The data include 5063 children, primary school students (grade 3-grade 6), from a middle-sized city in China. We apply the principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the large dimension of variables in HLE, and find the first three components, denoted as PC1, PC2 and PC3, can explain 95.45% of HLE information. PC1 and PC2 demonstrate strong positive association with 'total time spending on electronic devices' and 'literacy-related activity', respectively. PC3 demonstrates strong negative association with 'restrictions on using electronic devices'. From the generalized linear model, we find that PC1 significantly increases the risk of dyslexia (OR = 1.043, 95% CI: 1.018-1.070), while PC2 significantly decreases the risk of dyslexia (OR = 0.839, 95% CI: 0.795-0.886). Therefore, reducing the total time spending on electronic devices and increasing the literacy-related activity would be the potential protective factors for dyslexic children in China.
authors.affiliation: Department of Maternal and Child Health and MOE Key Lab of Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Department of Maternal and Child Health and MOE Key Lab of Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
authors.forename: Shanshan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shao
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia 29208, USA.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and MOE Key Lab of Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
authors.forename: Juntao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ke
authors.affiliation: Department of Maternal and Child Health and MOE Key Lab of Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: Department of Maternal and Child Health and MOE Key Lab of Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China.
authors.forename: Shengnan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia 29208, USA.
authors.forename: Jiajia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Maternal and Child Health and MOE Key Lab of Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, China. Electronic address: ranransong@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ranran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Song
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D003201:Computers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011932:Reading; D012307:Risk Factors; D013690:Television / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Development dyslexia; Electronic devices; Home literacy environment; Principal components analysis