Children at Risk of Dyslexia: Early Identification and Intervention

This study set out to test a new screening tool, the Scale of the Risk of Dyslexia (SRD), with work carried out between 1994 and 1998. The first part of the research drew on a group of 351 six-year-olds in the Polish "0" class, the preparatory year before formal schooling begins. Each child was assessed both with the SRD and with the instruments psychologists already relied on at the time. Based on these assessments, the proportion of "0" class pupils showing a risk of dyslexia came out at 7.9 percent.

Comparing the SRD against those established methods produced clear results. Scores on the new scale lined up to a statistically meaningful degree with measures of visual ability, motor ability, phonological awareness, and orientation in space. In other words, the SRD was picking up on the same developmental signals that the older, more time-consuming tools picked up on.

The second phase asked a harder question: could the scale actually predict how well a child would later learn to read and write? The working hypothesis held that both the general SRD score and its specific sub-indicators, covering a child's cognitive and motor functioning, would track with later reading and writing performance. To check this, 370 children from the "0" class were assessed with the SRD, and their reading and writing were then evaluated repeatedly: at the close of the "0" year, then at the end of class I (age seven), class II (age eight), and class III (age nine).

A single general SRD score, taken partway through the "0" year, turned out to carry real predictive weight. It forecast reading and writing achievement reliably through the end of classes "0", I, and II. Looking at the individual components, certain ones did more of the work than others. Reading outcomes were best anticipated by the "Phonological Skills" and "Visual Skills" measures. For writing, the sharpest predictors were "Phonological Skills", "Language", and "Fine Motor Skills".

Marta Bogdanowicz, Institute of Psychology, University of Gdansk, ul. Pomorska 68, 80-343 Gdansk, Poland.