Heikki Lyytinen

Niilo Mäki Institute

Unlike many believe, accurate and fluent basic reading skill (ie. to decode text) is not enough for learning knowledge via reading. More than 10 years ago a digital learning game supporting the first step towards full literacy, i.e., GraphoGame (GG) was developed by the first author with his colleagues in the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. It tr...

Possibly some of the most important skills that one can have are those needed to become fully literate. We all wish our children to reach such a goal. Unfortunately, the focus of attention in reading research has been on acquiring readiness to sound out written language, i.e., the basic reading skills. Full literacy is the readiness to learn knowle...

Reading Disability (RD) is often characterized by difficulties in the phonology of the language. While the molecular mechanisms underlying it are largely undetermined, loci are being revealed by genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In a previous GWAS for word reading (Price, 2020), we observed that top single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were...

Reading and writing are crucial life skills but roughly one in ten children are affected by dyslexia, which can persist into adulthood. Family studies of dyslexia suggest heritability up to 70%, yet few convincing genetic markers have been found. Here we performed a genome-wide association study of 51,800 adults self-reporting a dyslexia diagnosis...

Purpose This study was designed to assess the efficiency of a French version of GraphoGame (GG) against an equally engaging math intervention (Fiete Math, FM) in a large school sample of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods in grade 1 (N = 921). Method The intervention was implemented in two different cohorts who used GG or...

This chapter of The Routledge International Handbook of Dyslexia in Education discusses the definition of dyslexia and its recognition, its implications on relevant legislations and educational policy, and how teacher training programs take dyslexia into account in Finland. Furthermore, the services and tools available for identifying and supportin...

The use of spoken and written language is a capacity that is unique to humans. Individual differences in reading- and language-related skills are influenced by genetic variation, with twin-based heritability estimates of 30-80%, depending on the trait. The relevant genetic architecture is complex, heterogeneous, and multifactorial, and yet to be in...

The use of spoken and written language is a fundamental human capacity. Individual differences in reading- and language-related skills are influenced by genetic variation, with twin-based heritability estimates of 30 to 80% depending on the trait. The genetic architecture is complex, heterogeneous, and multifactorial, but investigations of contribu...

Background In 2018, it was found that only a quarter of Grade 3 children in India were reading at grade level. A growing demand for English education has further limited children's literacy achievement. Despite a strong evidence base in favour of using systematic phonics for building English literacy skills, many teachers in India continue to use r...

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a learning disorder affecting the ability to read, with a heritability of 40-60%. A notable part of this heritability remains unexplained, and large genetic studies are warranted to identify new susceptibility genes and clarify the genetic bases of dyslexia. We carried out a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on 227...

This paper discusses how the association learning principle works for supporting acquisition of basic spelling and reading skills using digital game-based learning environment with the Finland-based GraphoLearn (GL) technology. This program has been designed and validated to work with early readers of different alphabetic writing systems using repe...

This paper reviews the observations of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD). The JLD is a prospective family risk study in which the development of children with familial risk for dyslexia (N = 108) due to parental dyslexia and controls without dyslexia risk (N = 92) were followed from birth to adulthood. The JLD revealed that the lik...

Developmental dyslexia is a specific learning disorder with impairments in reading and spelling acquisition. Apart from literacy problems, dyslexics show inefficient speech encoding and deficient novel word learning, with underlying problems in phonological processing and learning. These problems have been suggested to be related to deficient speci...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Hiragana reading training on accuracy and fluency in 126 kindergarten children who had not learned Hiragana reading/writing in the classroom. The children were divided into two matched groups: training and control. Furthermore, each group was subdivided into three levels of attainment: good, mo...

Lay Description What is already known Serious games can support children's reading achievement, but less is known about their effects in mobile learning. GraphoLearn (GL) is a serious game designed to support reading acquisition, but previous studies suggest its effect on word‐level reading is limited. Explicit training of phonological skills and...

Pinyin is an alphabetic script that denotes pronunciations of Chinese characters. Studies have shown that Pinyin instruction enhances both phonological awareness (e.g., Shu et al., Developmental Science, 2008, 11, 171–181) and character reading (e.g., Lin et al., Psychological Science, 2010, 21, 1117–1122) in Chinese children. In the present study,...

Serious games are designed to improve learning instead of providing only entertainment. Serious games analytics can be used for understanding and enhancing the quality of learning with serious games. One challenge in developing the computerized support for learning is that learning of skills varies between players. Appropriate algorithms are needed...

Written Finnish and the Finnish literacy culture provide an exceptional context for an interesting separation of the various processes associated with reading acquisition. The orthography of Finnish is relatively optimally wired to give young learners an easy time acquiring basic decoding skills. Finnish orthography has full transparency in both re...

This study investigates the effectiveness of a digital game—GraphoLearn (GL)—in supporting second-grade students who have persistent difficulties with acquiring accurate and fluent reading skills. The participants (N = 37) were randomly assigned either to a 6-week intervention including sessions with GL, in addition to school-provided support, or a...

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is one of the most prevalent learning disorders, with high impact on school and psychosocial development and high comorbidity with conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and anxiety. DD is characterized by deficits in different cognitive skills, including word reading, spelling, rapi...

Reading is an essential skill in modern societies, yet not all learners necessarily become proficient readers. Theoretical concepts (e.g., the orthographic depth hypothesis; the grain size theory) as well as empirical evidence suggest that certain orthographies are easier to learn than others. The present paper reviews the literature on orthographi...

Objective: To determine whether GraphoLearn, a computer-assisted reading tool, could be used to support the English reading skills of struggling readers in India.

India, a country with a population of more than 1.3 billion individuals, houses the world’s second largest educational system. Despite this, 100 of millions of individuals in India are still illiterate. As English medium education sweeps the country, many are forced to learn in a language which is foreign to them. Those living in poverty further st...

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is one of the most prevalent learning disorders among children and is characterized by deficits in different cognitive skills, including reading, spelling, short term memory and others. To help unravel the genetic basis of these skills, we conducted a Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS), including nine cohorts of readin...

This study investigated the comparative efficacy of a phonics-based reading program and a language experience approach based literacy program to develop reading skills among Zambian early childhood school learners. The learners (n = 1 986; Grade 2 level; females = 50.1%) took either the phonics-based reading program (n = 1 593) or the alternative l...

A four-year research and development program at CAPOLSA (the Centre for the Promotion of Literacy in Sub-Saharan Africa) was inspired by widespread dissatisfaction with poor literacy outcomes of mass basic schooling in Zambia and sought to test the generalizability of a scientifically grounded, computer-mediated instructional resource developed in...

Dyslexia is a neurobiological disorder impairing learning to read. Brain responses of infants at genetic risk for dyslexia are abnormal already at birth, and associations from infant speech perception to preschool cognitive skills and reading in early school years have been documented, but there are no studies showing predicting power until adolesc...

This narrative review discusses quantitative indices measuring differences between alphabetic languages that are related to the process of word recognition. The specific orthography that a child is acquiring has been identified as a central element influencing reading acquisition and dyslexia. However, the development of reliable metrics to measure...

The systematic teaching of spelling-to-sound relations (decoding) is necessary for learning to read. Digital tools such as GraphoGame, a Finnish audio-visual reading game, can facilitate the initiation and automatization of the decoding process. This article presents a French adaptation of GraphoGame for smartphones and tablets. This adaptation imp...

Un enseignement systématique des relations grapho-phonologiques (le décodage) est nécessaire pour apprendre à lire. Des outils numériques, tel que GraphoGame, un logiciel audio-visuel finlandais, peuvent faciliter la mise en place, et l’automatisation du décodage. L’article présente une adaptation en français de GraphoGame sur tablette qui tient co...

This chapter outlines the approaches for supporting reading development in Finnish that have been developed on the basis of current knowledge on reading development and reading disabilities in Finnish. We discuss also the challenges that the features of Finnish language and orthography pose for the reader at various points of development. We also d...

Over two decades of Finnish research, monitoring children born with risk for dyslexia has been carried out in the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD). Two hundred children, half at risk, have been assessed from birth to puberty on hundreds of measures. The aims were to identify measures of prediction of later reading difficulty and to in...

This study investigated how the use of an online reading game differs in home and school environments. First and second graders (N = 194) participated in an 8-week training during which they used the reading program GraphoGame either at home or at school under the supervision of parents or teachers. Child participants were recommended by parents an...

GraphoGame (GG) is originally a technology-based intervention method for supporting children with reading difficulties. It is now known that children who face problems in reading acquisition have difficulties in learning to differentiate and manipulate speech sounds and consequently, in connecting these sounds to corresponding letters. GG was devel...

In this chapter, we introduce a new group-level analysis approach for event-related potentials (ERPs). This approach is based on the multi- domain feature of the ERP extracted by nonnegative tensor factorization (NTF) from a high-order ERP tensor of the time-frequency representations (TFRs).

In the previous chapters in this book, the event-related potential (ERP) data are the object for data processing. The ERPs are elicited by controlled stimuli, which hardly occur in real-world experiences. In this chapter, we show how to analyze the ongoing electroencephalography (EEG) elicited by a naturalistic music stimulus.

In this appendix, we introduce the history of mismatch negativity (MMN), the paradigm to elicit MMN, the corresponding knowledge of MMN and its temporal, spectral, time-frequency, and spatial properties. Most of the contents are based on Fengyu Cong’s dissertation in Finland (Cong, 2010).

In this chapter, we introduce our motivation for writing this book, review conventional event-related potential (ERP) data processing methods, state the existing problems, and briefly present solutions to these problems.

In this chapter, we introduce the classic independent component analysis (ICA) theory, the special ICA theory in event-related potential (ERP) data processing, and the systematic ICAapproach to extract the ERP components from the ERP data of only one subject under one condition. We call this ICA application in this book as individual ICA. Here, ERP...

This book is devoted to the application of advanced signal processing on event-related potentials (ERPs) in the context of electroencephalography (EEG) for the cognitive neuroscience. ERPs are usually produced through averaging single-trials of preprocessed EEG, and then, the interpretation of underlying brain activities is based on the ordinarily...

Reading acquisition is under the influence of the structure and function of the language itself, the individual’s capacity to learn and the differential methods of instruction. Alphabetic languages vary from the bidirectionally consistent phoneme–grapheme–phoneme units of Finnish, to English as the most inconsistent for small units, but the latter...

GraphoGame Teacher Training Service is a mobile-based solution for providing teachers with scientifically validated pedagogical training in literacy instruction. In many African countries teachers currently have insufficient knowledge to teach literacy in local languages and learning materials are scarce, especially for children with learning diffi...

Genetic studies of complex traits have become increasingly successful as progress is made in next-generation sequencing. We aimed at discovering single nucleotide variation present in known and new candidate genes for developmental dyslexia: CYP19A1, DCDC2, DIP2A, DYX1C1, GCFC2 (also known as C2orf3), KIAA0319, MRPL19, PCNT, PRMT2, ROBO1 and S100B....

This study focuses on the stability of dyslexia status from Grade 2 to Grade 8 in four groups: (a) no dyslexia in either grade (no-dyslexia, n = 127); (b) no dyslexia in Grade 2 but dyslexia in Grade 8 (late-emerging, n = 18); (c) dyslexia in Grade 2 but not in Grade 8 (resolving, n = 15); and (d) dyslexia in both grades (persistent-dyslexia, n = 2...

This study examined the effect of home environment factors in the acquisition of early reading skills (orthographic awareness and decoding competence). To assess these factors, a sample of seventy-two (72) first grade learners (females = 55%; age range = 7–8 years) and their maternal parents (age range 26–61 years old) from low SES in Zambia's capi...

Associative learning has been identified as one of several non-linguistic processes involved in reading acquisition. However, it has not been established whether it is an independent process that contributes to reading performance on its own or whether it is a process that is embedded in other linguistic skills (e.g., phonological awareness or phon...

This intervention study was conducted to document conditions under which a computer based literacy game (GraphoGame TM) could enhance literacy skills of first grade students in an African city. The participants were first grade students from Government schools (N = 573). These students were randomly sampled into control (N = 314) and various interv...

This study followed the development of reading speed, reading accuracy, and spelling in transparent Finnish orthography through Grades 2, 3, and 8. We compared two groups of children with familial risk for dyslexia, with or without dyslexia in Grade 2 (Dys_FR, n = 35 and NoDys_FR, n = 66) to a group of children without familial risk and dyslexia (C...

This paper provides an overview of the GraphoGame method. Both theoretical and methodological aspects related to the method are presented. The method’s guiding principles are based on the prevailing theories and experimental research findings on learning and teaching basic reading skills in alphabetic languages, especially from the point of view of...

The majority of Finnish children are in the fortunate position of learning the basic scholastic skills, such as reading, soon after entering school. This provides an important starting point for the acquisition of knowledge through written language which, in turn, facilitates wider opportunities to create success in one’s future life. Worldwide, mo...

Identifying children at risk for reading problems or dyslexia at kindergarten age could improve support for beginning readers. Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured for temporally complex pseudowords and corresponding non-speech stimuli from 6.5-year-old children who participated in behavioral literacy tests again at 9 years in the se...

Sensitivity to print is characterized by a left occipito-temporal negativity to words in the event-related potential N1. This sensitivity is modulated by reading skills and may thus represent a neural marker of reading competence. Here we studied the development of the N1 in regular and poor readers from preschool age to school age to test whether...

The aim of this longitudinal study was to build a model of the predictive values (poor phonological awareness, low letter knowledge, and slow naming speed) of spelling in 3 contrasting reading groups: a regular and a computer-assisted remedial intervention and mainstream instruction. The participants were 7-year-old Finnish school beginners (N = 16...

Dyslexia is one of the most common childhood disorders with a prevalence of around 5-10% in school-age children. Although an important genetic component is known to have a role in the aetiology of dyslexia, we are far from understanding the molecular mechanisms leading to the disorder. Several candidate genes have been implicated in dyslexia, inclu...

Computer-assisted training of Finnish phonemic length was conducted with 7-year-old Russian-speaking second-language learners of Finnish. Phonemic length plays a different role in these two languages. The training included game activities with two- and three-syllable word and pseudo-word minimal pairs with prototypical vowel durations. The lowest a...

Purpose: The authors investigated the importance of phonemic length discrimination ability on reading and spelling skills among children with reading disabilities and familial risk for dyslexia and among children with typical reading skills, as well as the role of prereading skills in reading and spelling development in children with reading disab...

This longitudinal study examined early cognitive risk and protective factors for Grade 2 reading disability (RD). We first examined the reading outcome of 198 children in four developmental cognitive subgroups that were identified in our previous analysis: dysfluent trajectory, declining trajectory, unexpected trajectory and typical trajectory. We...

We report an empirical comparison of the effectiveness of two theoretically motivated computer‐assisted reading interventions ( CARI ) based on the Finnish GraphoGame CARI : English GraphoGame Rime ( GG Rime) and English GraphoGame Phoneme ( GG Phoneme). Participants were 6–7‐year‐old students who had been identified by their teachers as being rela...

The aim of this randomised crossover study was to investigate the development of reading skills in children with low letter knowledge in the first year of their formal reading instruction and to assess the effectiveness of GraphoGame Polish (PL) – intensive computer game-based training in recognition of grapheme-phoneme associations. The results sh...

This longitudinal study examined early cognitive risk and protective factors for Grade 2 reading disability (RD). We first examined the reading outcome of 198 children in four developmental cognitive subgroups that were identified in our previous analysis: dysfluent trajectory, declining trajectory, unexpected trajectory and typical trajectory. We...

Background: The relationship between phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal short-term/working memory (ST/WM) and diagnostic category is investigated in control and dyslexic children, and the extent to which this depends on orthographic complexity. Methods: General cognitive, phonological and literacy skills were tested in 1,13...

Through exploiting temporal, spectral, time-frequency representations, and spatial properties of mismatch negativity (MMN) simultaneously, this study extracts a multi-domain feature of MMN mainly using non-negative tensor factorization. In our experiment, the peak amplitude of MMN between children with reading disability and children with attention...

This study addresses how to validate the rationale of group component analysis (CA) for blind source separation through estimating the number of sources in each individual EEG dataset via model order selection. Control children, typically reading children with risk for reading disability (RD), and children with RD participated in the experiment. Pa...

The role of letters and syllables in typical and dysfluent second grade reading in Finnish, a transparent orthography, was assessed by lexical decision and naming tasks. Typical readers did not show reliable word length effects in lexical decision, suggesting establishment of parallel letter processing. However, there were small effects of word syl...

Inspired by the localization, on 15q21.2 of the CYP19A1 gene in the linkage region of speech and language disorders, and a rare translocation in a dyslexic individual that was brought to our attention, we conducted a series of studies on the properties of CYP19A1 as a candidate gene for dyslexia and related conditions. The aromatase enzyme is a mem...