Kinderen met een Familiair Risico op Dyslexie in Groep 8

Abstract

In the present study it has been investigated how (a familial risk of) dyslexia manifests itself in children in grade 6 of primary school to get an integral view of this disorder. The focus of this study was on the primary reading deficit, the underlying cognitive deficits in phonological and orthographical awareness, automatization and visual attention, and possible secondary defecits that are not by definition part of dyslexia but that are associated with it. Three groups of children participated in the study; 85 children with a high familial risk of dyslexia, of whom 45 had dyslexia (HRDys) and 40 did not have dyslexia (HRnonDys), and 64 children with a low familial risk without dyslexia (LRnonDys). This design made it possible to investigate if factors were associated with the familial risk of dyslexia or only with the reading disorder itself. The results show that the group with dyslexia generally scores lower than the two non-dyslexic groups. The differences are especially large for reading tests at the word and sentence level and on tests measuring the underlying cognitive skills, but also on reading comprehension, vocabulary, arithmetic and the CITO academic placement test they score lower. In general, the scores of the HRnonDys-group are somewhat lower than the scores of the LRnonDys-group, but these differences were usually not significant. No difference was found in general wellbeing at school, but children with dyslexia are very aware of their reading and spelling problems and the fact that they need extra help. Furthermore, children with dyslexia read less at home and had to repeat a grade more often. We conclude that the major differences are specifically associated with dyslexia and not just with the familial risk of dyslexia.