Focus on Phonemes: The Research
What a decade of research tells us about learning disabilities in children and adults
The Context
Learning disabilities are unexpected. That is, the children and adults who have LD usually have strengths in general intelligence and have received the same educational opportunities as other students. Their difficulties in learning are not because of emotional or behavior problems, although behavior problems can certainly result from the frustration that comes from difficulties in learning to read, write, or calculate and reason arithmetically. Thus, LD does not occur because the child or adult lacks mental ability, motivation, or family and teachers who are very supportive of their efforts to learn. LD occurs for some very specific reasons that our research has identified, and LD produces a devastating array of specific learning difficulties that affect the lives of many. There are probably few families in this country that have not been touched by a learning disability in some way.
For most individuals with LD, the primary learning difficulty is one that involves reading. In fact, at least 60 to 80 percent of children and adults diagnosed with LD have their most severe difficulties in learning to read. This is unfortunate, since the major task in the early school grades is to learn to read, and most activities in the early and later grades, as well as in adulthood, involve and rely upon the ability to read. Consider the long-term consequences of these unexpected difficulties in learning that go beyond school and beyond childhood. The eager third graders experiencing reading difficulties becomes, in turn, the frustrated ninth graders who drop out of school, barely literate 25-year-old who read at the fourth grade level, the members of the 30-something generation who are unemployed and defeated adults struggling to raise families and forced to rely on public assistance.
The Research
The goal of the NICHD learning disabilities research program is to halt this cycle of failure and do so at the earliest possible moment. Following the Congressional mandate set forth in the Health Research Extension Act of 1985 (PL 99-158), which directed the NIH to increase the effectiveness of research on LD the NICHD 729-1600 was given the lead role in developing a network of multidisciplinary learning disability research programs. The major objectives of these programs were to develop new knowledge about the cause and outcomes of the different types of LD, their diagnosis, their epidemiology, their developmental course, and their response to different types of treatment and teaching interventions.
Each of the research centers and program projects within the NICHD Learning Disability Research Network was charged initially with the comprehensive study of reading disorders, or dyslexia. This prioritization was based on the fact that reading disorders are the most frequently occurring type of LD and have a debilitating impact on the ability to learn and function in school situations and later on in the workplace.
Since the NICHD initiated this systematic program of research, we have made a number of highly significant discoveries in the area of reading disabilities. We now know more about how many children are affected and what happens to them over the course of their development. We also know the basic or core deficit responsible for difficulties in learning to read, and we have some very good ideas about how identify this deficit before youngsters enter school so that early intervention programs can be implemented.
Building on the findings, NICHD-supported research has begun to identify treatment programs that can help children and adults at all ages to learn to read in a more effective manner. In addition, a number of exciting new studies have begun to identify the underlying brain mechanisms and the specific neural systems that appear responsible for difficulties in the development of language and reading abilities.
The Finding
Among the major findings of NICHD decade of research are the following:
Disabilities in reading reflect a common disorder in grades one through nine, affecting at least 10 million children, or one child in five.
Reading disability is persistent. Scientists at Yale have found that of the children who are reading disabled in the third grade, 74% remain disabled in the tenth grade. Reading disability does not go away and can not be characterized as a developmental lag, but represents an enduring deficit that remains with the child from the beginning of school into high school, and most likely into adulthood. These are children who often become our next generation of low-literate and unemployed adults.
NICHD research has uncovered a major cognitive deficit that prevents a child or and adult from learning to read. For many years, it was thought that reading disability or dyslexia reflected a visual problem where children tended to read letters and words backwards. Today, converging scientific evidence shows that it is not the visual, but the language system that is implicated in reading disability. Reading reflects language. A major core deficit responsible for the majority of cases of reading disability is at the most basic level of the language system—the level of the phoneme.
The phoneme is the basic unit of language. Defined as smallest unit of functional sound, the phoneme represents the common building block of all spoken and written words. Just as proteins must be broken down into their constituent amino acids before they can be digested, words must be broken down into phonemes before they can be processed by neural systems within the brain
LD children and adults with reading disability have difficulties with this most basic step in the reading pathway: breaking the written word into smaller phonologic units. This discovery of the phonologic basis for reading disability now allows us to understand why even bright individuals cannot learn to read.
Difficulties in breaking words into their constituent phonemes results in highly labored, slow, and inefficient approach to reading. Since the ability to read well depends upon rapid and automatic recognition and decoding of words, slow and inaccurate decoding is the most powerful predictor of difficulties in reading comprehension.
Phonologic difficulty is independent of an individual intelligence. The finding of a core deficit in phonology crystallizes the essence of what reading disability is about and who it affects; children and adults with good intelligence who cannot use their often excellent verbal and spatial reasoning abilities and problem-solving skills to decode written language, primarily because of a block in the first step of the reading pathway.
Several NICHD-supported scientists are now beginning to identify the brain regions responsible for phonology and deficits in phonology. A new non-invasive neuroimaging technology that allows us to directly visualize the activity in the brain while a person is attempting to read has provided the first look at where phonological processing, the basis of reading, takes place in the central nervous system. Preliminary data show that, for reading disabled adults and children, those areas of the brain responsible for phonological processing behave differently than for individuals who read well.
The identification of a phonological deficit as one of the core impediments in learning to read has led to discoveries that can help us identify early those kindergarten and first grade children who are likely to have difficulties learning to read. NICHD supported researchers have produced converging evidence that poor reading can be predicted in approximately 85 percent of the cases as early as mid-kindergarten using inexpensive screening measures. These findings are critical, given the children who are identified after the age of nine have a much greater difficulty ever learning to read efficiently.
The most powerful interventions that have been identified for reading disabilities to date consist of a combination of explicit and direct instruction in phonemic awareness, direct instruction in text reading and comprehension. This balanced approach appears to be necessary for adults as well as children with reading disabilities.
The Challenge for Practitioners
NICHD research findings have given us a much greater understanding of learning disabilities and, with it, new abilities in identification and treatment. But too few of our nations teachers are aware of these facts and the diagnostic and instructional methods that are abased on them. A substantial gap exists between the information we now have about learning to read and the information that teachers are provided during their training. This gap must be closed, for the sake of both our children and the adults they have, and will, become.
Dr. Reid Lyon directs and manages the research programs in learning disabilities, language disorders, and disorders of attention for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Over the last ten years, the programs he oversees have made great strides in gathering revealing and useful longitudinal data about the several types of learning disabilities;especially reading disabilities. The preceeding was drawn largely from his statement last year to the Subcommittee on Disability Policy of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.
The Context
Learning disabilities are unexpected. That is, the children and adults who have LD usually have strengths in general intelligence and have received the same educational opportunities as other students. Their difficulties in learning are not because of emotional or behavior problems, although behavior problems can certainly result from the frustration that comes from difficulties in learning to read, write, or calculate and reason arithmetically. Thus, LD does not occur because the child or adult lacks mental ability, motivation, or family and teachers who are very supportive of their efforts to learn. LD occurs for some very specific reasons that our research has identified, and LD produces a devastating array of specific learning difficulties that affect the lives of many. There are probably few families in this country that have not been touched by a learning disability in some way.
For most individuals with LD, the primary learning difficulty is one that involves reading. In fact, at least 60 to 80 percent of children and adults diagnosed with LD have their most severe difficulties in learning to read. This is unfortunate, since the major task in the early school grades is to learn to read, and most activities in the early and later grades, as well as in adulthood, involve and rely upon the ability to read. Consider the long-term consequences of these unexpected difficulties in learning that go beyond school and beyond childhood. The eager third graders experiencing reading difficulties becomes, in turn, the frustrated ninth graders who drop out of school, barely literate 25-year-old who read at the fourth grade level, the members of the 30-something generation who are unemployed and defeated adults struggling to raise families and forced to rely on public assistance.
The Research
The goal of the NICHD learning disabilities research program is to halt this cycle of failure and do so at the earliest possible moment. Following the Congressional mandate set forth in the Health Research Extension Act of 1985 (PL 99-158), which directed the NIH to increase the effectiveness of research on LD the NICHD 729-1600 was given the lead role in developing a network of multidisciplinary learning disability research programs. The major objectives of these programs were to develop new knowledge about the cause and outcomes of the different types of LD, their diagnosis, their epidemiology, their developmental course, and their response to different types of treatment and teaching interventions.
Each of the research centers and program projects within the NICHD Learning Disability Research Network was charged initially with the comprehensive study of reading disorders, or dyslexia. This prioritization was based on the fact that reading disorders are the most frequently occurring type of LD and have a debilitating impact on the ability to learn and function in school situations and later on in the workplace.
Since the NICHD initiated this systematic program of research, we have made a number of highly significant discoveries in the area of reading disabilities. We now know more about how many children are affected and what happens to them over the course of their development. We also know the basic or core deficit responsible for difficulties in learning to read, and we have some very good ideas about how identify this deficit before youngsters enter school so that early intervention programs can be implemented.
Building on the findings, NICHD-supported research has begun to identify treatment programs that can help children and adults at all ages to learn to read in a more effective manner. In addition, a number of exciting new studies have begun to identify the underlying brain mechanisms and the specific neural systems that appear responsible for difficulties in the development of language and reading abilities.
The Finding
Among the major findings of NICHD decade of research are the following:
Disabilities in reading reflect a common disorder in grades one through nine, affecting at least 10 million children, or one child in five.
Reading disability is persistent. Scientists at Yale have found that of the children who are reading disabled in the third grade, 74% remain disabled in the tenth grade. Reading disability does not go away and can not be characterized as a developmental lag, but represents an enduring deficit that remains with the child from the beginning of school into high school, and most likely into adulthood. These are children who often become our next generation of low-literate and unemployed adults.
NICHD research has uncovered a major cognitive deficit that prevents a child or and adult from learning to read. For many years, it was thought that reading disability or dyslexia reflected a visual problem where children tended to read letters and words backwards. Today, converging scientific evidence shows that it is not the visual, but the language system that is implicated in reading disability. Reading reflects language. A major core deficit responsible for the majority of cases of reading disability is at the most basic level of the language system—the level of the phoneme.
The phoneme is the basic unit of language. Defined as smallest unit of functional sound, the phoneme represents the common building block of all spoken and written words. Just as proteins must be broken down into their constituent amino acids before they can be digested, words must be broken down into phonemes before they can be processed by neural systems within the brain
LD children and adults with reading disability have difficulties with this most basic step in the reading pathway: breaking the written word into smaller phonologic units. This discovery of the phonologic basis for reading disability now allows us to understand why even bright individuals cannot learn to read.
Difficulties in breaking words into their constituent phonemes results in highly labored, slow, and inefficient approach to reading. Since the ability to read well depends upon rapid and automatic recognition and decoding of words, slow and inaccurate decoding is the most powerful predictor of difficulties in reading comprehension.
Phonologic difficulty is independent of an individual intelligence. The finding of a core deficit in phonology crystallizes the essence of what reading disability is about and who it affects; children and adults with good intelligence who cannot use their often excellent verbal and spatial reasoning abilities and problem-solving skills to decode written language, primarily because of a block in the first step of the reading pathway.
Several NICHD-supported scientists are now beginning to identify the brain regions responsible for phonology and deficits in phonology. A new non-invasive neuroimaging technology that allows us to directly visualize the activity in the brain while a person is attempting to read has provided the first look at where phonological processing, the basis of reading, takes place in the central nervous system. Preliminary data show that, for reading disabled adults and children, those areas of the brain responsible for phonological processing behave differently than for individuals who read well.
The identification of a phonological deficit as one of the core impediments in learning to read has led to discoveries that can help us identify early those kindergarten and first grade children who are likely to have difficulties learning to read. NICHD supported researchers have produced converging evidence that poor reading can be predicted in approximately 85 percent of the cases as early as mid-kindergarten using inexpensive screening measures. These findings are critical, given the children who are identified after the age of nine have a much greater difficulty ever learning to read efficiently.
The most powerful interventions that have been identified for reading disabilities to date consist of a combination of explicit and direct instruction in phonemic awareness, direct instruction in text reading and comprehension. This balanced approach appears to be necessary for adults as well as children with reading disabilities.
The Challenge for Practitioners
NICHD research findings have given us a much greater understanding of learning disabilities and, with it, new abilities in identification and treatment. But too few of our nations teachers are aware of these facts and the diagnostic and instructional methods that are abased on them. A substantial gap exists between the information we now have about learning to read and the information that teachers are provided during their training. This gap must be closed, for the sake of both our children and the adults they have, and will, become.
Dr. Reid Lyon directs and manages the research programs in learning disabilities, language disorders, and disorders of attention for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Over the last ten years, the programs he oversees have made great strides in gathering revealing and useful longitudinal data about the several types of learning disabilities;especially reading disabilities. The preceeding was drawn largely from his statement last year to the Subcommittee on Disability Policy of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources.