The overall goal of the research is to further elucidate the cognitive deficit responsible for the reading and spelling difficulties of individuals with familial dyslexia. This project is unique among studies of dyslexia in that these dyslexics are homogeneous with respect to etiology: they have an autosomal dominant form of familial dyslexia which is linked to chromosome 15. Thus they are likely to be both more homogeneous and specific in their phenotype than other dyslexic populations. The proposed research extends our earlier work on the cognitive phenotype in this population in two areas: the underlying neurolinguistic deficit or deficits and the cognitive strategies used in reading and spelling. In the former area, our earlier work found possible deficits in phoneme discrimination or segmentation skills, lexical retrieval, and phonological memory. The proposed research will attempt to disentangle experimentally these closely related skills. In the second area, we found their oral reading was much more impaired than reading comprehension, and that their written spelling was characterized by problems with both phonetic correspondences and more subtle orthographic rules and regularities. The proposed research will systematically test both the strategy they use to gain lexical access in reading and their orthographic """"""""competence"""""""" using priming, stroop, and letter search paradigms employing carefully selected words and non-words. Since our previous work suggests that aspects of the cognitive phenotype changes with development, the proposed research will also attempt to further specify the basic of these developmental changes. Thus, we will study cross-sectionally three subject groups: familial dyslexics, their unaffected family members, and non-familial dyslexics, at three developmental ages: 8 to 10 years, 12 to 14 years, and adulthood. A final phase will involve a three year longitudinal study of the 8 to 10 year olds in all three subject groups.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH038820-04
Application #
3376950
Study Section
(PCBA)
Project Start
1984-01-01
Project End
1988-02-29
Budget Start
1987-01-01
Budget End
1988-02-29
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
1987
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Colorado Denver
Department
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
065391526
City
Aurora
State
CO
Country
United States
Zip Code
80045
Johnson, Erin Phinney; Pennington, Bruce F; Lowenstein, Joanna H et al. (2011) Sensitivity to structure in the speech signal by children with speech sound disorder and reading disability. J Commun Disord 44:294-314
Rhee, Soo Hyun; Willcutt, Erik G; Hartman, Christie A et al. (2008) Test of alternative hypotheses explaining the comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder. J Abnorm Child Psychol 36:29-40
Bidwell, L Cinnamon; Willcutt, Erik G; Defries, John C et al. (2007) Testing for neuropsychological endophenotypes in siblings discordant for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Biol Psychiatry 62:991-8
Willcutt, Erik G; Pennington, Bruce F; Olson, Richard K et al. (2007) Understanding comorbidity: a twin study of reading disability and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet 144B:709-14
Pennington, Bruce F (2006) From single to multiple deficit models of developmental disorders. Cognition 101:385-413
Pennington, Bruce F; Willcutt, Erik; Rhee, Soo Hyun (2005) Analyzing comorbidity. Adv Child Dev Behav 33:263-304
Willcutt, Erik G; Doyle, Alysa E; Nigg, Joel T et al. (2005) Validity of the executive function theory of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a meta-analytic review. Biol Psychiatry 57:1336-46
Pennington, Bruce F (2005) Toward a new neuropsychological model of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: subtypes and multiple deficits. Biol Psychiatry 57:1221-3
Willcutt, Erik G; Pennington, Bruce F; Olson, Richard K et al. (2005) Neuropsychological analyses of comorbidity between reading disability and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: in search of the common deficit. Dev Neuropsychol 27:35-78
Smith, Shelley D; Pennington, Bruce F; Boada, Richard et al. (2005) Linkage of speech sound disorder to reading disability loci. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 46:1057-66

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