Difficultés de langage et de comportement à 3 ans et demi et retard en lecture au cours élémentaire

Évaluation des compétences en littératie chez les enfants français de 4-5 ans

INTRODUCTION

Preschool children develop early literacy skills that are predictive of their reading acquisition.Purpose of research: This study aims to use a short screening tool to examine emergent literacy performances. It includes 4-5-year-old children (N = 14,820) schooled in public and private schools in France. A number of public schools are labelled as with educational needs (Priority education network, REP). Children were assessed in three domains, letter-name knowledge, phonological skills and vocabulary.

RESULTS

It is shown that children schooled in REP have poorer scores than children schooled out of REP. We observe no significant difference between scores in children schooled in private schools and public schools out of REP. A significant effect of gender and age is observed, the first in favor of girls and the second in favor of older children. The effect of gender diminishes with the age, the difference between girls and boys becoming smaller. Finally, we examined the distribution of performances in the three domains of children who obtained the lowest scores.

CONCLUSIONS

A short screening tool to examine directly the literacy skills in preschool children is an opportunity to define and coordinate preventive actions and appropriate early interventions to help lessen difficulties in learning to read.

Emergent literacy skills, behavior problems and familial antecedents of reading difficulties: a follow-up study of reading achievement from kindergarten to fifth grade

This study examined the relation between emergent literacy skills, teachers' reports of behavioral problems, and word reading achievement in a community sample of French students. Family background was investigated and included familial antecedents of reading difficulties (Fa/Rd) and parents' educational level. The analyses explored the pattern of concurrent relations between behavioral, familial and emergent literacy measures in a sample of 812 preschoolers, and their predictive power in explaining word reading achievement in a sub-sample of 150 children followed from kindergarten to fifth grade. Word reading at fifth grade was predicted by kindergarten measures of phonological awareness and letter knowledge. Teachers' reports of inattention symptoms at each grade level were associated with early reading skills and with subsequent word reading. Fa/Rd were concurrently and longitudinally associated with emergent literacy skills, teachers' reported inattention and word reading. These results indicate that children with a family history of reading difficulties are at increased risk for the co-occurrence of reading difficulties and attention problems from kindergarten onward. These findings confirm the shared influence of Fa/Rd on the comorbidity between inattention symptoms and reading difficulties in a non-diagnosed community sample of preschool children followed through late elementary school.

[Deficits in reading acquisition in primary school: cognitive, social and behavioral factors studied in a sample of 1062 children]

BACKGROUND

Reading impairment is the major learning disability in children. While research on illiteracy has mainly been conducted from a sociological perspective, research on dyslexia has typically been studied from a cognitive-linguistic perspective. Studies that jointly investigate sociological, behavioral and cognitive factors in predicting reading outcome are rare and limited to English-speaking populations. The goal of the present study was to screen second grade children with reading impairment in French urban elementary schools and to pin down the factors that explain the various facets of reading failure and success.

METHODS

A total of 1062 children from 20 different schools in the city of Paris participated in the study. Different aspects of reading were assessed individually for children with a suspected impairment in reading acquisition. Subsequently, 131 poor readers and 50 typically developing readers were matched for sex, age, and school. For these children, medical, cognitive, behavioral and individual socioeconomic data were obtained. Group differences were examined and multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine how much variance in reading was explained by the various variables.

RESULTS

The prevalence of poor reading skills in grade 2 was highly influenced by neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) (ranging from 3.3% in high SES to 20.5% in low SES areas). Among the SES variables, employment of the father was a significant predictor of poor reading. Among the cognitive variables, phonological awareness and rapid naming were the most significant factors, much more than verbal or nonverbal intelligence. Among the behavioral variables, attention was an important factor but not externalized symptoms. Multiple regression analyses showed that reading outcome was best predicted by phonological awareness skills and attention deficits.

CONCLUSION

The majority of children with reading disability come from low SES areas. As in the English literature, the most robust predictor for reading impairment is phonological awareness, even when SES is taken into account. In addition, attention deficits seemed to aggravate reading impairments for children with weak phonological awareness skills. Successful early prevention should focus on reinforcing phonological awareness, recoding and attention skills.

Comportement perturbateur, difficultés d'attention et apprentissages entre 3,5 ans et 8 ans: une étude longitudinale en milieu scolaire

AIM

To evaluate the long term impact of teacher's report of behavior difficulties in children aged 3.5 years.

METHOD

Teachers assessed behavior and attention difficulties in 2054 children by questionnaire; reading performance, and behavior and attention difficulties were re-assessed in 695 of these children at second grade (7-8 years).

RESULTS

Reading delay was not significantly associated with behavior and attention assessment at 3.5 years. Children with behavior problems according to the teacher were most often different at 3.5 years and at 7-8 years.

CONCLUSION

Reading delay at second grade was not related to teacher's report of behavior problems at 3.5 years of age in this french longitudinal school study. These observations are discussed in relation to DSM-IV criteria of disruptive behavior and attention deficit in children.