Language difficulties are a shared risk factor for both reading disorder and mathematics disorder

Snowling, Margaret J.; Moll, Kristina and Hulme, Charles (2021): Language difficulties are a shared risk factor for both reading disorder and mathematics disorder. In: Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Vol. 202, 105009

Abstract

Disorders of reading and mathematics co-occur at greater than chance rates, but they are often studied separately. This article reports the reading and arithmetic outcomes at 9 years of age from a longitudinal study of 224 children at high risk for dyslexia. Using a cutoff at the 10th centile, groups of children with reading disorder (RD), mathematics disorder (MD), and comorbid reading disorder and math disorder (RD&MD) were identified. The risk of these disorders was elevated in children selected in preschool with language difficulties or at family risk for dyslexia. There was a high degree of comorbidity between RD and MD, and many cases-particularly in the comorbid group-also reached the diagnostic threshold for developmental language disorder (DLD). On measures of language, phoneme awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN) digits, and rated inattention, there was a stepwise pattern: RD > MD > RD&MD. Poor language was associated with each disor-der and appears to be a cognitive risk factor for RD, MD, and RD&MD. These findings suggest that there are shared genetic risk factors operating for both RD and MD. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Medicine
• Subjects: 600 Technology > 610 Medicine and health
• ISSN: 0022-0965
• Language: English