Developmental Dyslexia across Languages and Writing Systems

This volume presents the first truly systematic, multi-disciplinary, and cross-linguistic study of the language and writing system factors affecting the emergence of dyslexia. Bringing together a team of scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, it takes a dual focus on the language-specific properties of dyslexia and on its core components across languages and orthographies, to challenge theories on the nature, identification and prevalence of dyslexia, and to reveal new insights. Part I highlights the nature, identification and prevalence of dyslexia across multiple languages including English, French, Dutch, Czech and Slovakian, Finnish, Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese, while Part II takes a cross-linguistic stance on topics such as the nature of dyslexia, the universals that determine relevant precursor measures, competing hypotheses of brain-based deficits, modelling outcomes, etiologies, and intergenerational gene-environment interactions.

Introduction; 1. Developmental dyslexia: a cross-linguistic perspective Ludo Verhoeven, Charles Perfetti and Kenneth Pugh; Part I. Developmental Dyslexia across Languages and Writing Systems: 2. Developmental dyslexia in English Charles Perfetti and Lindsay Harris; 3. Developmental dyslexia in French Caroline Sprenger-Charolles; 4. Developmental dyslexia in Dutch Ludo Verhoeven; 5. Developmental dyslexia in Czech-Slovakian Markéta Caravolas, Marína Mikulajová and Anna Kuchaská; 6. Developmental dyslexia in Finnish Heikki Lyytinen, Ulla Richardson and Mikko Aro; 7. Developmental dyslexia in Russian Marina Zhukova and Elena Grigorenko; 8. Developmental dyslexia in Hebrew David Share, Michal Shany and Orly Lipka; 9. Developmental dyslexia in Japanese Teiko Wydell; 10. Developmental dyslexia in Chinese Min Xu, Li Hai Tan and Charles Perfetti; Part II. Cross-linguistic Perspectives on Developmental Dyslexia: 11. Behavioral precursors of developmental dyslexia Karin Landerl; 12. Neural predictors of developmental dyslexia Elizabeth Norton, John Gabrieli and Nadine Gaab; 13. Neurocognitive markers of developmental dyslexia Lan Shuai, Stephen Frost, Nicole Landi, Einar Mencl and Kenneth Pugh; 14. Role of visual attention in developmental dyslexia Andrea Facoetti, Sandro Franceschini and Simone Gori; 15. Morphological and semantic processing in developmental dyslexia S. Hélène Deacon, Xiuli Tong and Catherine Mimeau; 16. Modeling the variability of developmental dyslexia Johannes C. Ziegler, Conrad Perry and Marco Zorzi; 17. Modeling developmental dyslexia across languages and writing systems Jason Zevin; 18. Etiology of developmental dyslexia Richard K. Olson, Janice M. Keenan, Brian Byrne and Stefan Samuelsson; 19. Intergenerational transmission in developmental dyslexia Fumiko Hoeft and Cheng Wang; Epilogue; 20. Developmental dyslexia across languages and writing systems: the big picture Charles Perfetti, Kenneth Pugh and Ludo Verhoeven.

Ludo Verhoeven is Professor in Communication, Language and Literacy in the Behaviour Science Institute at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen and at the University of Curaçao.
Charles Perfetti is Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Director of the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
Kenneth Pugh is Professor in Psychology at the University of Connecticut and Associate Professor in Linguistics and Medicine at Yale University, Connecticut and he is President and Director of Research, and Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories.