| The study relates to two central issues in the developmental dyslexia: the role of pre-attentive and attentive learning mechanisms, and the question of specificity/generality of the learning disorder. At he age of five, a group of children at risk of developing dyslexia will be compared to normal controls with respect to two resarch questions: 1. Are there differences in habituation/dishabition or change detection between at-risk children and normal controls under pre-attentive and attentive conditions? 2. How do habituation and change detection parameters correlate with attentive learning as implicated in pre-reading skill learning and in reading and spelling? To investigate the next two resarch questions, at-risk children are divided over training conditions which reflect the contrast between very specific (phonological sensitivity and letter-sound knowledge) and non-specific skill training (motor balance): 3. When skills are practised which vary in their relation to reading and spelling acquisition, are there differences in skill learning? (the specificty/generality of learning disorder question). 4. Whenn skills are practised which vary in their relation to reading and spelling acquisition, are there differences in effects on reading and spellingacquisition and more specifically, on development of dyslexia? (the transfer-of-training question). |
