The University of Washington Learning Disabilities Center (UWLDC) proposes to continue a major collaboration between a College of Education and School of Medicine to investigate the educational and biological factors contributing to (and relevant to preventing and treating) dyslexia reading and writing disability) and dysgraphia (writing disability only). Project I will randomly assign dyslexics and dysgraphics in grades 4 to 9 alternative, with a focus on morphological processing, which will inform both the treatment studies of Project I and the Outreach services of the Clinical Core. Project III will carefully characterize the language phenotypes and conduct aggregation, segregation and linkage studies with the of as goal of ascertaining 500 probands and the nuclear and extended family members over the next five years. Project IV will scan the brain of Project III probands and normal control students matched the next five years. Project IV will scan the brains of Project III probands and normal control students matched on age and IQ, before and after Project 1 treatment, with PEPSI and fMRI to test hypothesis about brain language relationships. The projects have synergy in that they are tied together by a theoretical focus on the orthographic, phonological, and morphological processes of the word language module. The Administrative Core has Internal and External Advisory Boards, to guide the UWLDC in achieving its scientific aims and in Outreach Council to consult with the Outreach component to disseminate research results and apply them to practice through a summer program, teacher mentoring program, and workshops for teachers, administrators, and psychologists. A unique feature of the Clinical Core is its study of both normal, motivational development and the motivational challenges dyslexics and dysgraphics face. As during the first funding cycle, the Statistical Core will continue to provide state-of-the-art data analysis services for the behavioral and functional imaging data of Projects I, II, and IV (e.g., structural equation, modeling, hierarchical growth curve modeling, anova, ancova, and manova)) and aggregation, segregation, and linkage analysis for the data generated by Project III.
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