Karin Landerl

Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz | KFU Graz

Die Schuleingangsphase stellt eine sensible und anspruchsvolle Zeit für Kinder, Erziehungsberechtigte und Lehrkräfte dar. Eine frühzeitige Feststellung von individuellen Stärken und Schwächen ermöglicht dabei zeitnahe, kompetenzorien-tierte Interventionen. Im folgenden Beitrag wird die Entwicklung und Validierung eines förderorientierten österreich...

Reading and arithmetic are core domains of academic achievement with marked impact on career opportunities and socioeconomic status. While associations between reading and arithmetic are well established, evidence on underlying mechanisms is inconclusive. The main goal of this study was to reevaluate the domain-specificity of established predictors...

Zusammenfassung: Hintergrund: Die Bedeutung domänenübergreifender Vorläuferfähigkeiten für den Schulerfolg ist empirisch bereits gut belegt. Insbesondere Aspekte der exekutiven Funktionen wie Arbeitsgedächtnis und Aufmerksamkeit sagen Schulleistungen ähnlich gut vorher wie der Intelligenzquotient. Auch die vorschulischen grafomotorischen Kompetenze...

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...

Efficient processing of absolute magnitude and relative order of numbers is key for arithmetic development. This longitudinal study tested 1) whether there is a developmental shift in the contribution of symbolic magnitude and order processing to arithmetic between Grades 1 and 2, and 2) whether the development of symbolic numerical abilities is ch...

Diese Arbeit berichtet erste Befunde zur prädiktiven Validität eines förderorientierten Screenings kognitiver Vorläuferfertigkeiten für die Schuleingangsphase in Österreich. Das Screening wurde von 171 Kindern etwa acht Monate vor Schuleintritt (Schuleinschreibung) sowie unmittelbar nach Schuleintritt durchgeführt. Am Beginn der 2. Klasse wurden di...

Number writing involves transcoding from number words (e.g., "thirty-two") to written digit strings (32) and is an important unique predictor of arithmetic. The existing longitudinal evidence about the relation between transcoding and arithmetic is mostly language specific. In languages with number word inversion (e.g., German), the order of tens a...

Frontiers Research Topics e-Book: INTERPRETING THE COMORBIDITY OF LEARNING DISORDERS

The Research Topic (RT) the present Editorial refers to brings together a number of studies that try to elucidate cognitive risk (and protective) factors focussing particularly on the relationship between reading and math skills (and deficits) but also considering other disorders such as ADHD and motor difficulties, as well as protective factors (s...

Reading and writing multidigit numbers requires accurate switching between Arabic numbers and spoken number words. This is particularly challenging in languages with number-word inversion such as German (24 is pronounced as four-and-twenty), as reported by Zuber, Pixner, Moeller, and Nuerk (2009, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.04.003). The cur...

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...

What are the cognitive mechanisms supporting non-symbolic and symbolic order processing? Preliminary evidence suggests that non-symbolic and symbolic order processing are partly distinct constructs. The precise mechanisms supporting these skills, however, are still unclear. Moreover, predictive patterns may undergo dynamic developmental changes dur...

Converting visual-Arabic digits to auditory number words and vice versa is seemingly effortless for adults. However, it is still unclear whether this process takes place automatically and whether accessing the underlying magnitude representation is necessary during this process. In two event-related potential (ERP) experiments, adults were presente...

In this paper, we survey current evidence on cognitive precursors of reading in different orthographies by reviewing studies with a cross-linguistic research design. Graphic symbol knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming were found to be associated with reading acquisition in all orthographies invest...

Morpheme-based training programs to improve literacy skills are widely used with older children in the morphologically complex German language. This study investigated whether (1) morphological training is effective early in development (Grade 2) and (2) effects can be attributed to advanced morphological processing. Fifty-two German-speaking secon...

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...

There is an ongoing debate concerning the extent to which deficits in reading and spelling share cognitive components and whether they rely, in a similar fashion, on sublexical and lexical pathways of word processing. The present study investigates whether the neural substrates of word processing differ in children with various patterns of reading...

While reading is among the most important and well-researched topics of developmental psychology, sublexical regularities and how these regularities relate to reading skills have attracted less interest so far. This study tested general orthographic knowledge (GOK) using an indirect reaction time (RT)-based task, in which participants had to detect...

Does number–word structure have a long-lasting impact on transcoding? Contrary to English, German number words comprise decade–unit inversion (e.g., vierundzwanzig is literally translated as four-and-twenty). To investigate the mental representation of numbers, we tested the effect of visual and linguistic–morphological characteristics on the devel...

Dyscalculia is a neurodevelopmental disorder negatively affecting important aspects of maths learning. It results from a complex interplay of cognitive factors that are domain-specific (directly related to the domain of maths learning) or domain-general (related to different domains of learning). While current research has identified early predicto...

There is increasing evidence showing distinct neurocognitive underpinnings of different deficits of written language processing. This study investigated whether functional brain mechanisms related to isolated spelling problems can be distinguished from those observed for the combined profile of reading and spelling deficits (dyslexia). Two cognitiv...

The visual word form area (VWFA) in the left ventral occipito-temporal (vOT) cortex is key to fluent reading in children and adults. Diminished VWFA activation during print processing tasks is a common finding in subjects with severe reading problems. Here, we report fMRI data from a multicentre study with 140 children in primary school (7.9–12.2 y...

Game design activities support young people to acquire Computational Thinking (CT) skills in an entertaining way. While the importance of CT is increasing, we still lack empirical data on how cognitive functions support learning to program. The current study is a step towards bridging this gap. We tested 48 participants aged 10-15 during summer cou...

Early mathematical development relies upon the ability to translate between spoken number words and Arabic digits. Few studies have investigated whether differences in number word structure influence transcoding and its relationship with mathematics. We tested number writing and arithmetic in 177 German-speaking and 309 English-speaking Year 1 chil...

A substantial body of research has noted morphological priming effects in visual word recognition in deep orthographies, but it is still unclear whether similar effects exist in transparent orthographies. In the present experiment, we investigated the development of morphological decomposition in visual word recognition in the phonologically highly...

We examined the relation between home literacy environment (HLE) and early literacy development in a sample of children learning four alphabetic orthographies varying in orthographic consistency (English, Dutch, German, and Greek). Seven hundred and fourteen children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and tested on emergent literacy skills (voca...

The nature of the relation between non-symbolic and symbolic magnitude processing in the prediction of arithmetic remains a hotly debated subject. This longitudinal study examined whether the influence of non-symbolic magnitude processing on arithmetic is mediated by symbolic processing skills. A sample of 130 children with age-adequate (N = 73) or...

Objective: Reading fluency deficits characteristic for reading disorders (RD; F81.0) have been shown to be strongly associated with slow naming speed (e.g. in rapid automatized naming tasks). In contrast, children with an isolated spelling disorder in the context of unimpaired reading skills (iSD; F81.1) show naming speed task performances that are...

Developmental Dyslexia across Languages and Writing Systems - edited by Ludo Verhoeven October 2019

Deficits in reading fluency and in spelling can dissociate during development, resulting in groups with reading deficit only (RD), spelling deficit only (SD) and combined reading and spelling deficit (RSD). The current study investigated the one-to-two-year longitudinal stability of these subgroups in 167 German-speaking children. Reading fluency d...

Bericht über die wissenschaftlich überprüfte Wirksamkeit von Programmen und Komponenten, die in der LRS-Förderung zum Einsatz kommen

Appendix S1: Supporting Information

Supplementary Table S1: Nodes on white matter tracts were groups differed on FA. Results at the more stringent significance level of p ≤ .017 are reported in the upper part of the table. Results at p ≤ .05 are reported in the bottom part of the table. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) on FA are reported, with the statistical significance of re...

Supplementary Figure S1: Tract profiles for the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus and cingulum in the three groups (blue: Typical readers and spellers; Green: Dyslexia group; Red: SD group). The gray‐shadowed areas highlight regions on the tracts where groups differed. Nodes are ordered in the posterior–anterior direction

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...

Efficient and automatic integration of letters and speech sounds is assumed to enable fluent word recognition and may in turn also underlie the build-up of high quality orthographic representations, which are relevant for accurate spelling. While previous research showed that developmental dyslexia is associated with deficient letter-speech sound i...

We examined the cross-lagged relations between reading and spelling in five alphabetic orthographies varying in consistency (English, French, Dutch, German, Greek). Nine hundred forty-one children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and were tested on word and pseudoword reading fluency and on spelling to dictation. Results indicated that the rel...

German orthography has highly consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences, whereas the consistency of phoneme-grapheme correspondences is much lower, but morphological consistency is very high. After giving a short description of German language and orthography, the current article reviews earlier findings on early spelling acquisition, showing tha...

The present study investigated whether children with a typical dyslexia profile and children with isolated spelling deficits show a distinct pattern of white matter alteration compared with typically developing peers. Relevant studies on the topic are scarce, rely on small samples, and often suffer from the limitations of conventional tensor‐based...

Although phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are confirmed as early predictors of reading in a large number of orthographies, it is as yet unclear whether the predictive patterns are universal or language specific. This was examined in a longitudinal study across Grades 1 and 2 with 1,120 children acquiring one of five al...

Background Reading disorder (RD) and mathematics disorder (MD) frequently co‐occur. However, the exact comorbidity rates differ largely between studies. Given that MD is characterised by high heterogeneity on the symptom level, differences in comorbidity rates may result from different mathematical subskills used to define MD. Comorbidity rates wit...

Reading and spelling abilities are thought to be highly correlated during development, and orthographic knowledge is assumed to underpin both literacy skills. Interestingly, recent studies showed that reading and spelling skills can also dissociate. The current study investigated whether spelling skills (indicating orthographic knowledge) are assoc...

An impairment in the visual attention span (VAS) has been suggested to hamper reading performance of individuals with dyslexia. It is not clear, however, if the very nature of the deficit is visual or verbal and, importantly, if it affects spelling skills as well. The current study investigated VAS by means of forced choice tasks with letters and s...

Studies relying on oral report paradigms are listed in chronological order. (DOCX)

Studies without oral report paradigms are listed in chronological order. (DOCX)

Dissociations between reading and spelling problems are likely to be associated with different underlying cognitive deficits, and with different deficits in orthographic learning. In order to understand these differences, the current study examined orthographic learning using a printed-word learning paradigm. Children (4th grade) with isolated read...

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...

Findings on the neurophysiological correlates of developmental dyslexia are mixed, due to the differential conceptualization of the impairment. Studies differ on whether participants with developmental dyslexia are recruited based on reading skills only or reading as well as spelling skills. The current study contrasts the contribution of impaired...

Objective: In consistent orthographies, isolated reading disorders (iRD) and isolated spelling disorders (iSD) are nearly as common as combined reading-spelling disorders (cRSD). However, the exact nature of the underlying word processing deficits in isolated versus combined literacy deficits are not well understood yet. Methods: We applied a ph...

Dyslexia has been claimed to be causally related to deficits in visuo-spatial attention. In particular , inefficient shifting of visual attention during spatial cueing paradigms is assumed to be associated with problems in graphemic parsing during sublexical reading. The current study investigated visuo-spatial attention performance in an exogenous...

This study investigated whether German learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) acquire additional recoding strategies that they do not need for recoding in the consistent German orthography. Based on the psycholinguistic grain size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005) we expected students with little experience in EFL to use the same small-grai...

Dyslexia in consistent orthographies like German is characterized by dysfluent reading, which is often assumed to result from failure to build up an orthographic lexicon and overreliance on decoding. However, earlier evidence indicates effects of lexical processing at least in some German dyslexic readers. We investigated variations in reading styl...

The reading and spelling deficits characteristic of developmental dyslexia (dyslexia) have been related to problems in phonological processing and in learning associations between letters and speech-sounds. Even when children with dyslexia have learned the letters and their corresponding speech sounds, letter-speech sound associations might still b...

The present study aimed to define differences between silent and oral reading with respect to spatial and temporal eye movement parameters. Eye movements of 22 German-speaking adolescents (14 females; mean age = 13;6 years;months) were recorded while reading an age-appropriate text silently and orally. Preschool cognitive abilities were assessed at...