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Viewing a phonological deficit within a multifactorial model of dyslexia

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Abstract

Participants were administered multiple measures of phonological awareness, oral language, and rapid automatized naming at the beginning of kindergarten and multiple measures of word reading at the end of second grade. A structural equation model was fit to the data and latent scores were used to identify children with a deficit in phonological awareness alone or in combination with other kindergarten deficits. Children with a deficit in phonological awareness in kindergarten were found to be five times more likely to have dyslexia in second grade than children without such a deficit. This risk ratio substantially increased with the addition of deficits in both oral language and rapid naming. Whereas children with one or more kindergarten deficits were at heighten risk for dyslexia, some of these children were found to be adequate or better readers. These results are discussed within a multifactorial model of dyslexia that includes both risk and protective factors.

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Notes

  1. School district data indicated that 18.9 % of kindergarten children in the district met our definition of initial risk. This percentage was considerably lower than that in our sample (69.3 %), which was designed to include more at-risk children. Therefore, we created a weighting variable that was used in specific analyses. When applied, it gave the scores of at-risk participants proportionally less weighting and improved the representativeness of our results.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by an Institute of Education Sciences Grant (R324 A080118). We thank the Lawrence, Kansas public school district for their participation in this research project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Hugh W. Catts & Autumn McIlraith

  2. University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    Mindy Sittner Bridges & Diane Corcoran Nielsen

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  1. Hugh W. Catts
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  2. Autumn McIlraith
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  4. Diane Corcoran Nielsen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hugh W. Catts.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 Bivariate correlations among measures included in the structural equation modeling analysis
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Catts, H.W., McIlraith, A., Bridges, M.S. et al. Viewing a phonological deficit within a multifactorial model of dyslexia. Read Writ 30, 613–629 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-016-9692-2

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