We are delighted to welcome our keynote speakers, all of whom are leading authorities in dyslexia research. You can read more about them and their keynote presentations by clicking the links below.
Dorothy Bishop, University of Oxford
Treating reading disability without reading: evaluating alternative intervention approaches
Bob Burden, University of Exeter
Dyslexia and Self-Esteem
Stanislas Dehaene, Research Director, INSERM
The visual word form area: the brain’s letterbox
Barbara Foorman, Florida State University
The Bevë Hornsby Memorial Lecture
Reading and Language Intervention
Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge
Auditory Rhythmic Processing, Phonology and Dyslexia: A Cross-Language Analysis
Barbara Maughan, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Adult outcomes
Kate Nation, University of Oxford
Reading Comprehension Impairments
Richard Olson, University of Colorado
Genes and Environments
Cathy Price, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL
Neuro-imaging studies of developmental dyslexia
Sir Jim Rose: Former HMI Director of Inspection, OFSTED
The Rose review on the teaching of early reading
Margaret Snowling, University of York
Making Links
David Sugden, University of Leeds
Moving in the right direction: Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD)
Eric Taylor, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Attention Disorders
Rebecca Treiman, University of Washington
The Nata Goulandris Memorial Lecture
Learning to Spell in English
Aryan van der Leij, University of Amsterdam
International Perspectives
Dorothy Bishop, University of Oxford, UK
Treating reading disability without reading: evaluating alternative intervention approaches
Mainstream approaches to intervention for reading disability typically tackle reading disability by training skills directly related to the reading process, such as phonological segmentation. However, a range of alternative approaches advocate treating dyslexia at the neurobiological level, without directly training reading. In this talk I shall look at two such approaches: the Dore Achievement Centre’s cerebellar training method, and the use of fish oil dietary supplements, considering in each case the underlying theoretical rationale, the quality of scientific evidence for efficacy, and drawing some guidelines that can be applied more generally to evaluate interventions.
Bob Burden, University of Exeter, UK
Dyslexia and Self-Esteem
Despite calls for a more holistic approach to dyslexia, the vast majority of the research literature continues to focus on issues related to identification, brain location and literacy training.Meanwhile , the social and emotional concommitants of being diagnosed (or overlooked) as dyslexic and the effects on a child's developing sense of self remains an under-researched area.What research does exist is fraught with difficulties relating to the definition and control of key variables, thereby making generalisable conclusions about the mental health and wellbeing of children and adults manifesting learning difficulties of a dyslexic nature virtually impossible.
This presentation will consider what is currently known about various aspects of the self concepts and self-esteem of dyslexic children and adults and will highlight some problems with the validity and reliability of such studies. Important issues will be raised and defined in a manner that should help to improve the quality of future research in this area.The results of some recent research into the ways in which young people develop a sense of dyslexic identity will be described, and important factors contributing to dyslexic children's feelings of positive self-worth will be identified.
Stanislas Dehaene, Research Director, INSERM
The visual word form area: the brain’s letterbox
Reading is a recent cultural invention. During our primate evolution, our brains never evolved specifically for the purpose of reading. Reading acquisition must therefore encroach on evolutionary older mechanisms. I will describe brain imaging evidence which suggests how visual word recognition “recycles” an evolutionary older system for visual object recognition. A small area of the left hemisphere, the visual word form area, can be aptly named “the brain’s letterbox” inasmuch as it stores knowledge of the shapes of letters and their relations within a given writing system. This system specializes slowly during reading acquisition, and its insufficient activation is one of the clearest markers of dyslexia. Its properties may explain the peculiar mirror errors seen in many dyslexic and non-dyslexic children.
Barbara Foorman, Florida State University, USA
Reading and Language Intervention
The state of the art in reading and language remediation is prevention and early intervention. The word recognition skills of students with identified reading disabilities can be normalized with effective interventions. However, normalizing the fluency and comprehension skills of these students has proven extremely difficult. Because of the difficulty of remediating older students and the relative success of early intervention efforts, recent policy in the United States has shifted to encourage prevention and early intervention. Additionally, recent legislation provides an alternative to the requirement that students’ low achievement be unexpected (i.e., discrepant) relative to their intelligence in order to quality for special education services. The alternative approach, Response to Intervention (RTI), has spurred research examining the effectiveness of layered or tiered interventions. In this presentation, I will review research on prevention, early intervention, and RTI models and discuss educational implications.
Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge, UK
Auditory Rhythmic Processing, Phonology and Dyslexia: A Cross-Language Analysis
Phonological awareness is a strong predictor of reading development, and develops at three linguistic levels: syllable, rhyme and phoneme. I will develop the hypothesis that syllabic representation is primary across languages, and that children’s ability to recognise syllables and rhymes precedes learning a particular spelling system. I will argue that this developmental view can readily explain cross-language differences in reading acquisition and in the manifestation of developmental dyslexia. I will suggest that some of the processes underpinning language acquisition are disrupted in developmental dyslexia, in particular the auditory processing of cues to rhythm and stress. This causes deficits in the development of phonological representation before literacy is acquired. According to this theoretical analysis, dyslexic children in all languages should have an underlying auditory processing deficit that impairs their acquisition of syllabic structures. I will show that a plausible candidate across languages is basic auditory discrimination of amplitude envelope rise time and duration.
Barbara Maughan, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK
Adult outcomes
Coming soon
Kate Nation, University of Oxford, UK
Reading Comprehension Impairments
Coming soon
Richard Olson, University of Colorado, USA
Genes and Environments
Coming soon
Cathy Price, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, UK
Neuro-imaging studies of developmental dyslexia
Reading and spelling difficulties in developmental dyslexics are typically accompanied by other cognitive, sensory or motor disturbances. However, structural and functional neuro-imaging studies typically do not account for the variability within a dyslexic group. This unmodelled inter-subject variability may explain the inconsistent neuro-anatomical findings that have been reported from different laboratories. My talk will address the hopes and limitations of brain imaging studies of developmental dyslexia. I will show how the structure and function of the brain change with experience and the difficulties this poses for finding a causal basis for dyslexia at the neuronal level. I will then propose that the rich data set provided by neuro-imaging offers a novel and informative way of grouping dyslexics into different subcategories. Different neuronal markers can also unveil novel behavioural markers and, in the future, may help to integrate genetic and behaviour markers in a way that has not previously been possible.
Sir Jim Rose, Former HMI Director of Inspection, OFSTED, UK
The Rose review on the teaching of early reading
The Independent review of the teaching of early reading, commissioned by the Secretary of State in June 2005, was published in March 2006. The five aspects of the remit for the review will be explored:
Margaret Snowling, University of York, UK
Making Links
Coming soon
David Sugden, University of Leeds, UK
Moving in the right direction: Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD)
The presentation begins with a description of the core characteristics of children with DCD examining historical perspectives, current consensus on assessment and diagnosis and co-occurring characteristics. The condition is a developmental disorder and more often than not is present with characteristics that are associated with other developmental disorders involving attention, cognitive and social skills. More detailed descriptions of the disorder are explored through an examination of the underlying processes that may contribute to the difficulties encountered, including those involved in the planning and execution of movements. An explanation of motor development in children is presented through an ecological perspective. A similar line is taken with intervention for children with DCD placing an emphasis on a dynamical interaction between the resources of the child, the task being learned and the context in which learning is set with an aim of improving motor competencies required for activities of daily living.
Eric Taylor, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK
Attention disorders
The understanding of Attention Disorders has recently advanced greatly from neurobiological investigation. The brain size is often reduced, and some structures (especially right frontal lobes, striatum and cerebellar vermis) are altered disproportionately. Some of these structures are activated during the performance of tests that involve the inhibition of a response. In young people with ADHD these areas are underactivated, and they have a corresponding difficulty in holding themselves back, delaying gratification, and thinking before they act. Genetic influences are strong. Behaviour modification, CNS stimulants, atomoxetine and other drugs are somewhat effective but seldom abolish the problems. The neuropsychology has suggested simple interventions that can be carried out in classrooms. The relationship with reading performance is complex: the neuropsychology is different; the association arises early in life; but their course tends to be independent
Rebecca Treiman, University of Washington, USA
Learning to spell in English
I begin my talk by considering the nature of the English writing system, arguing that it is less chaotic and more principled than commonly believed. Although many sounds have more than one possible spelling, one can often narrow the range of possibilities by considering the surrounding sounds, the type of word, and other factors. Children need to learn about these factors, and teachers need to be aware of them in order to teach most effectively. In the second part of the talk, I take a look at the early spellings of typically developing children. I show that common errors such as “so” for “slow” and “ded” for “dead” have a linguistic basis. The last part of the talk takes up the issue of spelling in dyslexic children. Data are presented to show that the trouble spots and types of errors are usually the same in struggling older students as in typical beginners.
Aryan van der Leij, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
International Perspectives
International perspectives have become very fashionable in behavioral sciences. With its genetic origins and appearance in all literate societies, dyslexia is very suitable for such an approach. In addition to the growing consensus about the universality of the core deficit, there is increasing attention to the influence of differences in languages and orthographies on the development, incidence and characteristics of dyslexia. This leads to fascinating questions. Are neuro-biological markers of dyslexia at a very young age the same in the USA, Finland, and The Netherlands? Is it, as a child at familial risk of developing dyslexia, preferable to be born in Italy, above the UK? Do Chinese dyslexics have the same phonological problems as dyslexics from Western countries? Is it possible to be better in reading and spelling in your second language English, than in your more transparent first language Swedish? Is early intervention of at-risk children more effective in Denmark than elsewhere? Why are the results of computer-assisted instruction better on the other side of the Atlantic than on this side? And what can we learn from these comparisons in order to improve our understanding? Possible answers to some of these questions will be discussed in this presentation.
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