Can Self-reported Ocular Motor and Perceptive Alterations Predict a Reading Disability? A Pilot Study on the Analytic...

Area of Science:

• Neurodevelopmental Disorders
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Early diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders, particularly reading disability (developmental dyslexia), is crucial.
• Self-report questionnaires are emerging as reliable, low-cost, and time-efficient screening tools.
• Perceptual and visuomotor functions are implicated in the pathogenesis of developmental dyslexia.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a modified version of the Analytic Anamnestic Protocol (AAP2) specifically targeting developmental dyslexics.
• To evaluate the preliminary results of the AAP2 in a group of school-age children with reading disabilities.
• To assess the AAP2's effectiveness in identifying early risk factors for developmental dyslexia.

Main Methods:

• The AAP2 comprises 25 questions across four sections: family, general, past, and recent specialist medical history.
• An additional seven questions focus on lexical difficulties related to developmental dyslexia (DD section).
• The AAP2 was administered to 37 typically developing children and 34 children with diagnosed dyslexia.

Main Results:

• Dyslexic children exhibited significantly higher visuomotor and sensory scores compared to controls, particularly in the recent specialist medical history and DD sections.
• The visuosensory domain was more affected than the visuomotor function in the dyslexic group.
• The AAP2 demonstrated high sensibility (94.12%) and specificity (77.78%) for the recent specialist medical history section, and 100% sensibility and 80% specificity for the DD section.

Conclusions:

• The AAP2 shows promise as an effective tool for screening children at risk for developmental dyslexia in early primary school.
• The questionnaire aids in identifying potential risk factors through self-reported perceptual and visuomotor history.
• Further refinement of the scoring criteria may enhance the AAP2's diagnostic accuracy.