6533b7d6fe1ef96bd126643c

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Early signs of dyslexia from the speech and language processing of children

subject

description

The Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia project (JLD) has followed the development of 200 children from birth until 10 years of age. Half the children are from families in which at least one of the parents has dyslexia, thus the child has a high risk of becoming dyslexic, and half have no such risk. Here the main findings of four studies in linguistics from the JLD project are reviewed. The speech processing skills were studied in 6, 18, 24 and 30-month-old children. The findings show that early signs of dyslexia can be detected in speech processing both phonologically and morphosyntactically. These precursors can be seen in perception or production of duration, in the prosody and phonotactics of word production attempts and word structures, as well as in the complexity of morphosyntactic features of expressions. This information can be useful in practice to provide early and appropriate assistance for those children who most likely will face difficulties in learning to read and write at school.