Developmental dyslexia, dyslexia that is not caused by brain trauma, is typically diagnosed at around seven to eight-years-old, however a team from the Children’s Hospital Boston in the United States found they could see signs of the condition on brain scans in children as young as four.
The researchers performed MRI brain scans on 36 pre-school age children while doing tasks that required them to decide whether two words started with the same sound.
They found that children with high activation in parts of the brain that control visual information and language perception, had better pre-reading skills such as rhyming, knowing letters and letter sounds and could separate sounds within a word, for instance ‘cow’ within ‘cowboy’.
Children at risk of dyslexia showed no increase in activation of the frontal parts of the brain that control thinking and learning, as seen in older children and adults with the condition.
Nadine Gaab from the Children’s Hospital Boston, said, ‘We already know that older children and adults with dyslexia have dysfunction in the same brain regions. However, this study tells us that the brain’s ability to process language sounds is deficient even before children have begun learning to read.
‘Families often know that their child has dyslexia as early as four-years-old, but they can’t get interventions at their schools. If we can show that we can identify these children early, schools may be encouraged to develop programmes.’
The authors go on to say that by identifying children at risk of dyslexia around pre-school age or earlier, they hope that it will reduce the negative social and psychological consequences children face.