Behavioral Genetic Approach to the Study of Dyslexia

Brooke Soden Hensler · Christopher W. Schatschneider · Jeanette E. Taylor · Richard K. Wagner

32 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics

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Reading and Literacy Development Language Development and Disorders Developmental and Educational Neuropsychology

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Dyslexia is a prominent focus of practitioners, educators, and researchers because of the myriad consequences of failing to read proficiently. The aim of this study was to provide a brief overview of how twin studies can offer insight on the cause of many human behaviors and disorders including dyslexia, discuss common misconceptions regarding findings from behavioral genetic studies, briefly review the evidence on the relationship between genes, environment, and dyslexia, and finally present some findings from a large-scale twin study on reading and dyslexia. METHOD: Participants were twins from a large ethnically and socioeconomically diverse twin sample in an ongoing longitudinal study of reading and dyslexia. Heritabilities of reading ability and dyslexia were calculated for 1,024 first grade twins on a standardized reading measure. Children were identified as dyslexic if they scored at the 15th percentile or below on a reading measure. RESULTS: Relatively high heritabilities were observed for both reading ability and dyslexia indicating substantial genetic influences. Further, results indicated some overlap of genetic factors influencing reading ability and dyslexia. CONCLUSIONS: Behavioral genetic studies offer a means of understanding the cause of dyslexia. This study extended research to a more diverse sample than extant studies and found lower heritability estimates of reading ability and dyslexia, but a similar pattern of results indicating possible genetic overlap. Twin studies provide perspective for discoveries of specific genes involved in dyslexia by quantifying the amount of variance waiting to be accounted for by genes while simultaneously providing an impetus to continue working on efforts for environmental intervention.

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References

2004Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades?2003A definition of dyslexia 2003Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of IQ in Young Children 2001Cerebral mechanisms of word masking and unconscious repetition priming 1992Evidence That Dyslexia May Represent the Lower Tail of a Normal Distribution of Reading Ability 2005Generalist Genes and Learning Disabilities.2009Dyslexia: A New Synergy Between Education and Cognitive Neuroscience 2005The effects of theoretically different instruction and student characteristics on the skills of struggling readers

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