Seguimiento de niños con retraso lector severo

Resumen

Se presentan los resultados de un seguimiento de 223 niños de nivel socioeconómico bajo, desde el inicio de segundo hasta el final de quinto año de básica, con el objetivo de determinar la evolución de los lectores retrasados severos. Inicialmente hubo 150 niños con un nivel lector de decodificación inferior al percentil 21, que fueron reevaluados tres veces en los años siguientes. Las evaluaciones finales señalan un subgrupo que continuó presentando un retraso severo en lectura durante todo el período, el cual afectó al rendimiento escolar global. Otro subgrupo superó las dificultades iniciales en decodificación, pero no logró igualar el rendimiento de los lectores normales en comprensión lectora. La relación entre retraso de decodificación y retraso en la comprensión no fue lineal. Se concluye la presencia de un grupo de niños que pueden ser definidos como “disléxicos” tanto por la severidad y persistencia de su retraso, como por presentar déficits en el procesamiento fonológico, oral y escrito.

Abstract

A study of 223 low socio-economic status children followed-up from grade 2 to 5 (age 7 to 10 yrs.) is described. Its main purpose was to determine the evolution of severely retarded readers. In an initial assessment carried out in 2nd grade, 150 children were found to be under the 21st percentile in decoding or reading level. These children were reassessed yearly during the following 3 years using reading tests and regular pedagogical tests. Final assessments show a sub-group who continued to exhibit severe reading retardation during the whole period, affecting their overall school performance. Another sub-group surmounted their initial decoding disabilities, but did not succeed in reaching the perfomance of normal readers in reading comprehension. The relationship between backwardness in decoding and comprehension was not lineal. To conclude, the study identified a group of children who could be defined as dyslexic due to both the severity and persistence of their delay, and to the existence of deficits in their oral and written phonological processing.

Extended Summary

The major purpose of this paper is to discuss the predictive value of variables related to early reading retardation. Current interest in long-term follow-up studies on learning disabilities is due to the evidence that early reading difficulties are long-standing, and have a wide-ranging effect on school performance that goes beyond reading itself. Conclusions drawn from follow-up research work are in general not optimistic. One of the main methodological problems is the variability in children's efficiency during the school years owing to a variety of factors hard to delimit or to identify.

A three year follow-up study of 223 grade 2 children (average age 7.5 years), from five public schools located in impoverished areas of Santiago de Chile, was carried out. The main interest was to observe how a sub-group of children severely retarded in reading at the beginning of the study evolved from second to fifth grade.

All the children were initially assessed on: non-verbal intelligence, decoding ability, reading, phonemic processing (inversion of three-letter words, and reading pseudowords), verbal memory, and abstraction. The follow-up study included successive assessments of the children's reading competence through different levels of the same silent reading comprehension test. 68% of the children were found to be under the 21st percentile on decoding skills, according to a pretest administered at the beginning of second grade, which is a serious disability for learning to read and write. Seven months later the percentage of children under the 21st percentile had gone down to 29%.

During the following years, reading differences between the severely retarded group at the beginning of the study and the other four groups, assessed through the silent reading comprehension test, persisted. Variances and mean differences were always significant. Differences in school achievement (language, maths, and general average) were also significant.

As noticed above, the decoding skills of a sub-group of students with severe reading retardion had improved seven months after the study begun. This subgroup kept its superiority in reading comprehension during the follow-up period, but did not reach the average performance of the children without reading retardation. They represent 17% of the sample, and could be considered «late starters» in acquiring reading skills. Previously, these children had obtained better results in phonemic processing than those who showed no improvement in reading competence.

The group of children who were initially more severely retarded in reading, made less progress and scored lower at follow-up than children who were less severely delayed. We felt that in view of their persistent reading retardation, and the lower scores they obtained in phonemic processing with respect to normal readers, these children were probably suffered from dyslexia. Overall, a crucial predictive factor seems to be the development of some degree of pre-reading competence. In the present sudy this factor was auditory-phonemic processing.

Palabras clave:

• Retraso lector severo
• dislexia
• decodificación
• comprensión lectora silenciosa
• procesamiento fonológico

Keywords:

• Severe reading retardation
• dyslexia
• decoding
• silent reading comprehension
• phonemic processing