Longitudinal case-studies of developmental dyslexia in Norwegian.

This study examined retrospectively the preschool cognitive and linguistic profiles and emergent literacy skills in four Norwegian dyslexic children. The aim was to identify prognostic indicators that were associated with the reading impairments observed in an earlier study of these children. In comparison to a control group of at-risk children who were normal readers at age 10, three of the four dyslexic children exhibited either stagnation or a decline in speech accuracy in the presence of a vocabulary growth spurt at age 2-3 years. Skills in phonological awareness seemed to vary inconsistently with both early speech development and emergent literacy across the four cases. Delayed development in emergent literacy turned out to be the most potent prognostic indicator of later reading disorders. The study was guided by lexical restructuring theories of dyslexia.