Theses (Ed.S.)--Marshall University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: contains 22 p. Bibliography: p. 22.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Bowling Green State University, 2006. / Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 65 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Previous studies have shown that dyslexic individuals who supplement windowed reading practice with intensive small-scale hand-eye coordination tasks exhibit marked improvement in their reading skills. Here we examine whether similar hand-eye coordination activities, in the form of artwork performed by children in kindergarten, first and second grades, could reduce the number of students at-risk for reading problems. Our results suggest that daily hand-eye coordination activities significantly reduce the number of students at-risk. We believe that the effectiveness of these activities derives from their ability to prepare the students perceptually for reading.

The nature of cognitive impairments in developmental dyslexia was investigated in two studies. The issue of heterogeneity was addressed and an attempt was made to identify cognitive processes which might feature in a dimensional model of reading ability. The first study examined the hypothesis that developmental dyslexics are delayed in their general perceptual development. Phonological, visual and tactile segmentation skills were assessed together with nonword naming ability. As a group, the dyslexics were only impaired for reading age at phoneme deletion and nonword naming. However, individual variation was present within the dyslexic group. Individuals exhibiting severe impairments were identified in tests of rhyme judgement, auditory organisation and visual segmentation. The perceptual delay hypothesis received only limited confirmation. The dyslexic group was impaired at the most analytical level of phonological segmentation, but not at more holistic levels. Visual and phonological segmentation skills showed some association, but were dissociated from performance in the tactile modality. The second study further explored these findings using a new sample. This dyslexic group also suffered nonword naming impairments for reading age. However, like their reading age controls, they showed a processing advantage for onset and rime units in a phonological deletion task but not in an orthographic lexical decision task. The efficacy of long-term memory representations was assessed. Individuals within the dyslexic group displayed a very deviant performance in a repetition memory task, and the group as a whole was impaired at recognising words to which they had been repeatedly exposed. It was concluded that the difficulties experienced by individual dyslexic children were varied, and that less frequent problems were likely to be overlooked by assessing impairment in developmental dyslexia in terms of group performance. Further investigation of how visual and memory processes relate to reading development would be a worthwhile addition to the extensive work linking phonological processing with reading achievement.

No description available.

As a specific reading disability with a neurobiological origin, developmental dyslexia is distinct from reading difficulties due to sensory impairments in vision or hearing. The disability is commonly attributed to a core deficit in phonological processing, the understanding of how phonemes, syllables and words are used in a language. Dyslexia is a complex genetic disorder with a strong genetic component; nine susceptibility loci (DYX1-9) have been identified with eight other dyslexia linkages lacking gene symbols also reported. The statistical methods of linkage and association were employed to investigate the genetic susceptibility for phonological coding dyslexia (PCD), a common form of dyslexia characterized by difficulties in single word decoding and resulting from deficits in phonological processing. A genome-wide non-parametric linkage (NPL) study and four targeted fine-mapping family-based association studies were performed to locate the genes predisposing to PCD in 101 Canadian families with multiple affected members. The NPL scan identified suggestive evidence for linkage with PCD at the two novel regions 16p12 and 4q12-q13, and provided independent confirmation of linkage to the well-replicated DYX3 locus (at 2p21). Some support for linkage was noted at a further five regions previously linked to dyslexia, while no linkage was detected at five other reportedly-linked regions, in particular, no linkage to DYX2 (6p22.2). Four regions (16p12, 2p21, 4q12-q13 and 6p22.2) were tested for association with PCD in 83 trios, a subset of the 101 families, using the transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) and the affected family-based controls (AFBAC) test. Association was detected in each of the three PCD-linked regions in the NPL scan; none of the tested marker alleles was associated with PCD in the 6p22.2 region. Four candidate genes were identified, two of which belong to the same gene family, with a possible role in the neurodevelopmental mechanisms underlying reading. / Medicine, Faculty of / Medical Genetics, Department of / Graduate

The primary purpose of this study was to compare performance on selected gross motor skills of elementary school-aged children diagnosed as dyslexic and a similar group of school-aged children who are identified as non-dyslexic. A secondary purpose of the study will be to compare performance within the dyslexic group according to the severity of the affliction.

No description available.

Background The most common reading disability is dyslexia. This reading disability encompasses various symptoms such as poor spelling outcomes, reading fluency and difficulties in expressing oneself. Failur to diagnose children coping with dyslexia is a potential risk of discrimination and social exclusion. Aim The aim of this Master thesis is to explore if the primary school teachers in Prishtina are conscious of the term dyslexia. This provides a better understanding of teacher’s perceptions about dyslexia and to which extent they are aware of it. An additional purpose is to investigate teachers’ awareness of their responsibilities to provide equal opportunities for these children. Method A qualitative research, using an open-ended and semi-structured questionnaire had been utilized to collect data about teacher’s awareness and knowledge concerning dyslexia and its issues. The texts provided by the surveys were subjected to thematic analysis. Result The results of the presented qualitative research helped to understand the awareness of the primary teachers in Prishtina concerning the term dyslexia. The findings showed that most of the teachers heard about dyslexia, but demonstrated clear misconceptions of what dyslexia is. Even though the majority of teachers had misconception of dyslexia, more than half of them considered their role as very important to provide equal opportunities for children coping with dyslexia. Conclusion One of the significant findings to emerge from this thesis is that the primary teacher's of Prishtina have misconceptions about dyslexia. The results of this study support the idea that due to the lack of knowledge among teachers about dyslexia, children coping with dyslexia might be at risk of discrimination and exclusion comparing to other children.

Background: Developmental dyslexia is a wide-ranging and persistent neurobiological disorder classified under specific learning disorders. The literature widely recognises the multifactorial nature of developmental dyslexia, specifically the language-related origin. Objectives: The current review systematically identified and synthesised possible language-based risk factors associated with developmental dyslexia in children (age one to three and four to ten years) and determined the level of evidence associated with these risk factors. The review aimed to identify individualised risk factors in children with developmental dyslexia to promote optimal neurodevelopmental outcomes. Method: Four relevant databases were searched from January 2002 until December 2018. A hand search of the included articles’ reference lists was also performed to identify any relevant publication. The language-based risk factors in children with developmental dyslexia in 48 publications were studied. Results: All language components are compromised to some degree in children with developmental dyslexia at specific ages. These results indicate the intricacy of language, but also emphasise that developmental dyslexia should be considered on a continuum and not as an absolute disorder. Only a few studies investigated language-based risk factors in participants five years and younger. Phonological-based risk factors were the most reported language component and comprise of risk factors within phonological awareness, rapid automized naming, and working memory. The second language component entailed morphology. Several inflectional and derivational morphological risk factors, as well as risk factors within syntactic processing, were acknowledged. Compromised receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge, semantic processing, and fluency were identified as risk factors for the language component of semantics. The final component of language entailed pragmatics. Unfortunately, a limited amount of evidence is available in this regard. However, the evidence available confirmed poor linguistic pragmatics as a risk factor in children with developmental dyslexia. Conclusion: These language components are interrelated and should be viewed holistically as risk factors for developmental dyslexia to promote earlier identification. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / MA / Unrestricted