Dyslexia: Deficits, Genetic Aetiology and Computer-based Remediation

The rationale, methods, and major results are reviewed for two related research programs on the genetic aetiology and remediation of dyslexia. Results from the rust program have revealed some severe deficits in phonological coding (non word reading) and related segmental language skills in most dyslexic children. Behaviour-genetic analyses of twin data have shown that dyslexic readers heritable deficits in phonological coding are closely linked to their heritable deficits in word recognition. The second research program is exploring the remediation of dyslexic readers' deficits in phonological coding -and word recognition through the use of talking computers. Dyslexic children read stories daily on computers in the schools and request speech feedback for difficult words. Preliminary results indicate that computer-based reading and speech feedback result in substantial gains for phonological coding and word recognition.