TY - JOUR
T1 - Multifactorial pathways facilitate resilience among kindergarteners at risk for dyslexia
T2 - A longitudinal behavioral and neuroimaging study
AU - Zuk, Jennifer
AU - Dunstan, Jade
AU - Norton, Elizabeth
AU - Yu, Xi
AU - Ozernov-Palchik, Ola
AU - Wang, Yingying
AU - Hogan, Tiffany P.
AU - Gabrieli, John D.E.
AU - Gaab, Nadine
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank all participating families for their longitudinal commitment to this study, and school coordinators and principals who made screening possible (for an overview of participating schools, see http://gablab.mit.edu/index.php/READstudy). We are grateful for all additional members of the READ team who contributed to data collection and initial processing, especially Bryce Becker, Sara Beach, Abigail Cyr, and Kelly Halverson. We also acknowledge the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health (R01 HD067312). Funding was also provided for Jennifer Zuk by the National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award (F31 DC015919-01), the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation, and the Sackler Scholar Programme in Psychobiology.
Funding Information:
We thank all participating families for their longitudinal commitment to this study, and school coordinators and principals who made screening possible (for an overview of participating schools, see http://gablab.mit.edu/index.php/READstudy ). We are grateful for all additional members of the READ team who contributed to data collection and initial processing, especially Bryce Becker, Sara Beach, Abigail Cyr, and Kelly Halverson. We also acknowledge the Athinoula A. Martinos Imaging Center at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health (R01 HD067312). Funding was also provided for Jennifer Zuk by the National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award (F31 DC015919‐01), the American Speech‐Language‐Hearing Foundation, and the Sackler Scholar Programme in Psychobiology.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Recent efforts have focused on screening methods to identify children at risk for dyslexia as early as preschool/kindergarten. Unfortunately, while low sensitivity leads to under-identification of at-risk children, low specificity can lead to over-identification, resulting in inaccurate allocation of limited educational resources. The present study focused on children identified as at-risk in kindergarten who do not subsequently develop poor reading skills to specify factors associated with better reading outcomes among at-risk children. Early screening was conducted in kindergarten and a subset of children was tracked longitudinally until second grade. Potential protective factors were evaluated at cognitive-linguistic, environmental, and neural levels. Relative to at-risk kindergarteners with subsequent poor reading, those with typical reading outcomes were characterized by significantly higher socioeconomic status (SES), speech production accuracy, and structural organization of the posterior right-hemispheric superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). A positive association between structural organization of the right SLF and subsequent decoding skills was found to be specific to at-risk children and not observed among typical controls. Among at-risk children, several kindergarten-age factors were found to significantly contribute to the prediction of subsequent decoding skills: white matter organization in the posterior right SLF, age, gender, SES, and phonological awareness. These findings suggest that putative compensatory mechanisms are already present by the start of kindergarten. The right SLF, in conjunction with the cognitive-linguistic and socioeconomic factors identified, may play an important role in facilitating reading development among at-risk children. This study has important implications for approaches to early screening, and assessment strategies for at-risk children.
AB - Recent efforts have focused on screening methods to identify children at risk for dyslexia as early as preschool/kindergarten. Unfortunately, while low sensitivity leads to under-identification of at-risk children, low specificity can lead to over-identification, resulting in inaccurate allocation of limited educational resources. The present study focused on children identified as at-risk in kindergarten who do not subsequently develop poor reading skills to specify factors associated with better reading outcomes among at-risk children. Early screening was conducted in kindergarten and a subset of children was tracked longitudinally until second grade. Potential protective factors were evaluated at cognitive-linguistic, environmental, and neural levels. Relative to at-risk kindergarteners with subsequent poor reading, those with typical reading outcomes were characterized by significantly higher socioeconomic status (SES), speech production accuracy, and structural organization of the posterior right-hemispheric superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). A positive association between structural organization of the right SLF and subsequent decoding skills was found to be specific to at-risk children and not observed among typical controls. Among at-risk children, several kindergarten-age factors were found to significantly contribute to the prediction of subsequent decoding skills: white matter organization in the posterior right SLF, age, gender, SES, and phonological awareness. These findings suggest that putative compensatory mechanisms are already present by the start of kindergarten. The right SLF, in conjunction with the cognitive-linguistic and socioeconomic factors identified, may play an important role in facilitating reading development among at-risk children. This study has important implications for approaches to early screening, and assessment strategies for at-risk children.
KW - DTI
KW - dyslexia
KW - resilience
KW - risk
KW - screening
KW - white matter
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85084996775&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85084996775&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/desc.12983
DO - 10.1111/desc.12983
M3 - Article
C2 - 32356911
AN - SCOPUS:85084996775
SN - 1363-755X
VL - 24
JO - Developmental Science
JF - Developmental Science
IS - 1
M1 - e12983
ER -