Reading Development in Children at Risk for Dyslexia

In this chapter we review research from our group on the characteristics of young children in families with a history of reading difficulties, and on early intervention to help these children. We preface the research with short surveys of familial risk for developmental reading disability, of behavior-genetic studies of early literacy growth, and of other groups' work on children at familial risk. We summarize research demonstrating that: 1. Preschool children at risk show deficits in insights and abilities characteristic of older children with established reading problems and are consequently not as well resourced as children not at risk for learning to read; these compromised resources include aspects of linguistic processing (the "phonological core"), as well as emergent literacy knowledge.