Novel word learning deficits in infants at family risk for dyslexia
Ikusi/ Ireki
Data
2020Egilea
Kalashnikova, Marina
Goswami, Usha
Burnham, Denis
Kalashnikova, M, Goswami, U, Burnham, D. Novel word learning deficits in infants at family risk for dyslexia. Dyslexia. 2020; 26: 3– 17. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1649
Laburpena
Children of reading age diagnosed with dyslexia show deficits
in reading and spelling skills, but early markers of later
dyslexia are already present in infancy in auditory
processing and phonological domains. Deficits in lexical
development are not typically associated with dyslexia.
Nevertheless, it is possible that early auditory/phonological
deficits would have detrimental effects on the encoding and
storage of novel lexical items. Word-learning difficulties
have been demonstrated in school-aged dyslexic children
using paired associate learning tasks, but earlier manifestations
in infants who are at family risk for dyslexia have not
been investigated. This study assessed novel word learning
in 19-month-old infants at risk for dyslexia (by virtue of
having one dyslexic parent) and infants not at risk for any
developmental disorder. Infants completed a word-learning
task that required them to map two novel words to their
corresponding novel referents. Not at-risk infants showed
increased looking time to the novel referents at test compared
with at-risk infants. These findings demonstrate, for
the first time, that at-risk infants show differences in novel
word-learning (fast-mapping) tasks compared with not atrisk
infants. Our findings have implications for the development
and consolidation of early lexical and phonological
skills in infants at family risk of later dyslexia.