Biomedical subjects

Anna-Maija Poikkeus

Publications and source records attributed to Anna-Maija Poikkeus.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Predicting delayed letter knowledge development and its relation to grade 1 reading achievement among children with and without familial risk for dyslexia.

The authors examined the developmental trajectories of children's early letter knowledge in relation to measures spanning and encompassing their prior language-related and cognitive measures and environmental factors and their subsequent Grade 1 reading achievement. Letter knowledge was assessed longitudinally at ages 4.5, 5.0, 5.5, and 6.5 years; earlier language skills and environmental factors were assessed at ages 3.5 and 4.5 years; and reading achievement was assessed at the beginning and end of Grade 1. The analyses were conducted on a longitudinal data set involving children with and without familial risk for dyslexia. Emerging from the trajectory analysis of letter knowledge were 3 separate clusters: delayed (n = 63), linearly growing (n = 73), and precocious (n = 51). The members of the delayed cluster were predominantly children with familial risk for dyslexia, and the members of the precocious cluster were predominantly control group children. Phonological sensitivity, phonological memory, and rapid naming skills predicted delayed letter knowledge. Environmental predictors included level of maternal education and the amount of letter name teaching. Familial risk for dyslexia made a significant contribution to the predictive relations. Membership in the delayed cluster predicted poor reading performance at Grade 1.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2005

Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) measured at birth predict later language development in children with and without familial risk for dyslexia.

We report associations between brain event-related potentials (ERPs) measured from newborns with and without familial risk for dyslexia and these same children's later language and verbal memory skills at 2.5, 3.5, and 5 years of age. ERPs to synthetic consonant-vowel syllables (/ba/, /da/, /ga/; presented equiprobably with 3,910-7,285 msec interstimulus intervals) were recorded from 26 newborns at risk for familial dyslexia and 23 control infants participating in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The correlation and regression analyses showed that the at-risk type of response pattern at birth (a slower shift in polarity from positivity to negativity in responses to /ga/ at 540-630 msec) in the right hemisphere was related to significantly poorer receptive language skills across both groups at the age of 2.5 years. The similar ERP pattern in the left hemisphere was associated with poorer verbal memory skills at the age of 5 years. These results demonstrate that ERPs of newborns may be valid predictors of later language and neurocognitive outcomes.

Brain↗

PubMed2004

The development of children at familial risk for dyslexia: birth to early school age.

Children at risk for familial dyslexia (n = 107) and their controls (n = 93) have been followed from birth to school entry in the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (JLD) on developmental factors linked to reading and dyslexia. At the point of school entry, the majority of the at-risk children displayed decoding ability that fell at least 1 SD below the mean of the control group. Measures of speech processing were the earliest indices to show both group differences in infancy and also significant predictive associations with reading acquisition. A number of measures of language, including phonological and morphological skill collected repeatedly from age three, revealed group differences and predictive correlations. Both the group differences and the predictive associations to later language and reading ability strengthened as a function of increasing age. The predictions, however, tend to be stronger and the spectrum of significant correlations wider in the at-risk group. These results are crucial to early identification and intervention of dyslexia in at-risk children.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2004

Emerging phonological awareness differentiates children with and without familial risk for dyslexia after controlling for general language skills.

Emerging phonological awareness was compared in two groups of 3.5-year-old children belonging to the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD): children with familial risk of dyslexia (at-risk group n = 98) and children without such risk (control group n = 91). Four computer animated tasks were used: Word-level and Syllable-level Segment Identification, Synthesis, and Continuation of Phonological Units. The control group children manifested higher mastery than children in the at-risk group in phonological awareness, and the proportion of children with a low phonological awareness mean score was 2.5 times higher in the at-risk group than in the control group. In both groups, phonological awareness at 3.5 years was predicted by early language skills assessed between 14 and 26 months of age, and it was also associated with concurrent language. The difference between the at-risk and control group at 3.5-year in phonological awareness remained significant, even when the effect of other language skills such as productive and receptive vocabulary, and mastery of inflections, measured both at earlier ages and concurrently were controlled for. Our findings indicate that familial risk for dyslexia is reliably reflected in emerging phonological awareness already at this early age and it can be assessed independently of other language skills.

Articulation Disorders↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Assessment of three-and-a-half-year-old children's emerging phonological awareness in a computer animation context.

Four computer-animated tasks were created to analyze the underlying structure of emerging phonological awareness at 3.5 years of age and to explore the factors that influence children's (N = 91) performance on the tasks. Our findings indicated that already at this young age, children are able to master tasks demanding identification, blending, and continuation of phonological units when the tasks are presented in a motivating assessment context. In line with earlier research, children showed higher mastery in dealing with words and syllables than in dealing with phonemes. Targets in the initial position of a word were easier for children to identify than those in the final position. Our analysis provided support for two major dimensions of emerging phonological awareness based on the cognitive operations of the tasks: identification and blending of phonological units.

Awareness↗