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Associations between home literacy environment and children's reading ability are often assumed to reflect a direct influence. However, heritability could account for the association between parent and child literacy-related measures. We used data from 101 mother/father/child triads to consider the extent to which associations between home literacy and children's reading fluency could be accounted for by parental reading fluency. Although home literacy correlated significantly with children's reading, no variable predicted significant variance after allowing for parental reading, except the number of books in the home. By incorporating measures of heritable parental traits into studies investigating home environment effects, we can start to identify which variables are correlates of parental traits and which might play a causal role in fostering children's development.

Which children go on to develop dyslexia? Since dyslexia has a multifactorial etiology, this question can be restated as: what are the factors that put children at high risk for developing dyslexia? It is argued that a useful theoretical framework to address this question is Pennington's (2006) multiple deficit model (MDM). This model replaces models that attribute dyslexia to a single underlying cause. Subsequently, the generalist genes hypothesis for learning (dis)abilities (Plomin and Kovas, 2005) is described and integrated with the MDM. Next, findings are presented from a longitudinal study with children at family risk for dyslexia. Such studies can contribute to testing and specifying the MDM. In this study, risk factors at both the child and family level were investigated. This led to the proposed intergenerational MDM, in which both parents confer liability via intertwined genetic and environmental pathways. Future scientific directions are discussed to investigate parent-offspring resemblance and transmission patterns, which will shed new light on disorder etiology.

The present study investigated the role of early oral language and family risk for dyslexia in the two developmental pathways toward reading comprehension, through word reading and through oral language abilities. The sample contained 237 children (164 at family risk for dyslexia) from the Dutch Dyslexia Program. Longitudinal data were obtained on seven occasions when children were between 4 and 12 years old. The relationship between early oral language ability and reading comprehension at the age of 12 years was mediated by preliteracy skills and word-decoding ability for the first pathway and by later language abilities for the second pathway. Family risk influenced literacy development through its subsequent relations with preliteracy skills, word decoding, and reading comprehension. Although performance on language measures was often lower for the family-risk group than for the no-family-risk group, family risk did not have a specific relation with either early or later oral language abilities.

Availability of orthography during word learning has been found to facilitate learning the word’s spelling and pronunciation and has been proposed to facilitate learning its meaning. This has not been studied in second language (L2) learning yet, in which word learning often corresponds to translation learning. Therefore, an L2 word learning experiment was carried out. Grade 6 Dutch students (n = 92) were taught English words, with orthography available or absent. Words were divided into those that are spelled entirely like they sound (consistent, e.g., lilt) and those that are not (inconsistent, e.g., budgie). Students learned the words using forward translation (Dutch to English) or backward translation (English to Dutch). At post-test spelling, reading and forward as well as backward translation were measured. Results indicate that availability of orthography mainly facilitated word spelling and reading. There was a trend for orthography to affect learning the translation. Learning consistent words benefited most from orthography, especially when the post-test demanded forward translation. As forward translation requires retrieval of the word’s pronunciation, it is likely that students used orthographic mapping to better remember the pronunciations of the English words. Forward translation was easier if words were learned in the same direction, but backward translation was not affected by learning direction. Together, these results imply that orthography supports translation learning, although this is likely caused by learning the word’s pronunciation and not by establishing a direct link between orthography and word meaning.

Academic accommodations associated with a diagnosis of dyslexia might be incentives for college students without reading or spelling difficulties to feign dyslexia and obtain the diagnosis unfairly. In the current study we examined malingering practices by comparing the performance of college students instructed to malinger dyslexia (n = 28) to that of students actually diagnosed with dyslexia (n = 16). We also included a control group of students without reading and spelling difficulties (n = 28). The test battery included tasks tapping literacy skills as well as underlying cognitive skills associated with literacy outcomes. These tasks are commonly used in diagnosing dyslexia. We examined patterns in the performance of malingerers across tasks and tested whether malingerers could be identified based on their performance on a limited number of tasks. Results indicated that malingerers scored significantly lower than students with dyslexia on reading and spelling skills; i.e., the core characteristics of dyslexia. Especially reading performance was extremely low and not in line with students' age and level of education. Findings for underlying cognitive skills were mixed. Overall, malingerers scored lower than students with dyslexia on tasks tapping mainly speed, whereas the two groups did not differ on tasks reflecting mainly accuracy. Based on word and pseudoword reading and letter and digit naming, the three groups could be distinguished with reasonable sensitivity and specificity. In all, results indicate that college students seem to understand on which tasks they should feign dyslexia, but tend to exaggerate difficulties on these tasks to the point where diagnosticians should mistrust performance.

Introduction In children with epilepsy, comorbidities are frequent. In dyslexia, comorbidities are increasingly acknowledged. Little is known about temporal aspects (dyslexia antedating or postdating epilepsy onset, time interval), epilepsy types, and dyslexia phenotypes. Method From over 1000 files of children with epilepsy, 51 cases were retrospectively identified with a formal diagnosis of dyslexia. Ages at diagnoses of dyslexia and epilepsy, epilepsy variables, and dyslexia-related neuro-cognition (phoneme deletion and rapid letter naming) were recorded. Analyses Temporal variables, epilepsy variables, and neuro-cognition were analyzed with chi-squared, t tests, ancova, and generalized linear models. Results Duration of epilepsy to diagnosis of dyslexia ranged from − 5.5 years (dyslexia antedating epilepsy) to 10.1 years. In 35% of the children, diagnosis of dyslexia antedated the emergence of epilepsy. Dyslexia was seen across seizure types, with some preference for temporal lobe and rolandic epilepsy; rates for antedating and postdating dyslexia were similar. Notably, encephalopathic development was also seen. No specific dyslexia phenotype was seen. Children with dyslexia diagnoses after or in close temporal relationship to diagnoses of epilepsy (shortly before or after) scored lower on phonology and naming. Conclusion Antedating and postdating dyslexia can be seen in all epilepsy types. In a natural setting, dyslexia may antedate or postdate the emergence of epilepsy by several years. Around the time the epilepsy is about to surface, scores on dyslexia-related neuro-cognitive tasks are lowest, suggesting a bidirectional effect of the seizure condition on cognition. Encephalopathic development may be mimicking dyslexia criteria in some cases.

Fruit tree canker caused by Neonectria ditissima is a serious problem in apple-producing regions with moderate temperatures and high rainfall throughout the year; especially in northwestern Europe, Chile, and New Zealand. Control measures are applied to protect primary infection sites, mainly leaf scars, from invasion by external inoculum. However, latent infections may occur when young apple trees are infected symptomlessly during propagation. This study aimed to develop a method for detection of latent fruit tree canker infections. Inoculations with conidiospore suspensions of N. ditissima were carried out in tree nurseries on the main stems of two-year-old trees of three apple cultivars and one pear cultivar. The inoculations were carried out during the natural abscission period in the autumn. No visible lesion or canker formations were present at the time when the inoculated trees were uprooted. It appeared that the infections may remain latent during the period from infection to uprooting (2 months) and during the subsequent 4 months of cold storage of the trees. Nevertheless, symptoms were generally induced within 8 weeks after transfer of infecting planting material from the nursery field into a climate chamber with high temperature and high relative humidity. The methodology presented is developed to detect latent infections of N. ditissima in nursery trees, prior to planting in the orchards, and it may contribute in reducing the problem with European fruit tree canker in commercial production.

We examined the cross‐lagged relations between reading and spelling in five alphabetic orthographies varying in consistency (English, French, Dutch, German, and Greek). Nine hundred and forty‐one children were followed from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and were tested on word and pseudoword reading fluency and on spelling to dictation. Results indicated that the relations across languages were unidirectional: Earlier reading predicted subsequent spelling. However, we also found significant differences between languages in the strength of the effects of earlier reading on subsequent spelling. These findings suggest that, once children master decoding, the observed differences between languages are not related to the direction of the effects but to the strength of the effects from reading to spelling. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

One of the most important competencies to become a life-long learner is considered to be self-regulated learning (SRL). In this narrative review study, we describe research on the relationships between classroom- and dyad-level student-teacher interactions and the components of elementary students’ SRL. These components include metacognition and the regulation of cognition, motivation, behavior, and emotions. Three electronic databases were examined, which resulted in 30 studies that met our eligibility criteria. The results suggest that both well-organized and emotionally supportive classroom climates, in addition to high-quality instructional support, are associated with students’ metacognition. Results also show that associations between classroom-level interactions and the components of SRL that tap students’ behaviors and motivation are mixed. In contrast, at the dyad-level, higher quality teacher-student interactions were consistently found to be related to the motivational component of SRL. We also found a positive relationship with metacognition, but at the dyad level studies on the other components of SRL were hardly available. The review revealed a number of gaps in research on SRL, such as the paucity of studies on the regulation of cognitions and emotions, the overreliance on self-reports in the measurement of SRL, and the absence of cross-cultural research.