Abstract

Children with poor reading comprehension despite typical word reading skills were examined using neuropsychological, genetic, and neuroimaging data collected from the Genes, Reading and Dyslexia Study of 1432 Hispanic American and African American children. This unexpected poor comprehension was associated with profound deficits in vocabulary, when compared to children with comprehension skills consistent with their word reading. Those with specific comprehension difficulties were also more likely to have RU2Short alleles of READ1 regulatory variants of DCDC2, strongly associated with reading and language difficulties. Subjects with RU2Short alleles showed stronger resting state functional connectivity between the right insula/inferior frontal gyrus and the right supramarginal gyrus, even after controlling for potentially confounding variables including genetic ancestry and socioeconomic status. This multi-disciplinary approach advances the current understanding of specific reading comprehension difficulties, and suggests the need for interventions that are more appropriately tailored to the specific comprehension deficits of this group of children.

Details

Title
A molecular-genetic and imaging-genetic approach to specific comprehension difficulties in children
Author
Li, Miao 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Malins, Jeffrey G 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; DeMille, Mellissa M C 3 ; Lovett, Maureen W 4 ; Truong, Dongnhu T 3 ; Epstein, Katherine 3 ; Lacadie, Cheryl 5 ; Mehta, Chintan 3 ; Bosson-Heenan, Joan 3 ; Gruen, Jeffrey R 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Frijters, Jan C 7 ; Boada, Richard 8 ; Gottwald, Stephanie 9 ; Hill, Dina 10 ; Jacobson, Lisa A 11 ; Mahone, E Mark 11 ; Willcutt, Erik G 12 ; Wolf, Maryanne 9 

 Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA; Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 
 Department of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, USA 
 Department of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA 
 Neurosciences and Mental Health Program, Learning Disabilities Research Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 
 Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA 
 Department of Pediatrics, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; Department of Genetics and the Investigative Medicine Program, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA 
 Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Child and Youth Studies, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada 
 University of Colorado Denver, Aurora, CO, USA 
 Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA 
10  University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA 
11  Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA 
12  University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA 
Pages
1-10
Publication year
2018
Publication date
2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20567936
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2136546870
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.