The developmental dyslexia scale for standard mandarin: A study among early primary students

Zhongling Liu; Lei Wang; Tingting Wang; Lingyan Chen; Chuanfei Dong; Yuanyuan Zhang; Yanyan Huo; Ling Ma; Dan Wu; Shiyu Liu; Duo Liu; Jinjin Chen

doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104841

The developmental dyslexia scale for standard mandarin: A study among early primary students

Res Dev Disabil. 2024 Sep 21:154:104841. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104841. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Zhongling Liu¹, Lei Wang², Tingting Wang³, Lingyan Chen⁴, Chuanfei Dong⁵, Yuanyuan Zhang⁶, Yanyan Huo⁷, Ling Ma⁸, Dan Wu⁹, Shiyu Liu¹⁰, Duo Liu¹¹, Jinjin Chen¹²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: sylvie_liu@sjtu.edu.cn.
² Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, Department of Special Needs Education, Oslo, Norway. Electronic address: lew@isp.uio.no.
³ Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Electronic address: 14439689@life.hkbu.edu.hk.
⁴ Department of Child Development, United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan. Electronic address: ooyohuo@outlook.com.
⁵ Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: dongchuanfei@shchildren.com.cn.
⁶ Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: zhangyy@shchildren.com.cn.
⁷ Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: huoyy1992@163.com.
⁸ Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: ling_ma@sjtu.edu.cn.
⁹ Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Donders Center for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Electronic address: doreenwoo@outlook.com.
¹⁰ Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. Electronic address: 980841589@qq.com.
¹¹ Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Electronic address: duoliu@eduhk.hk.
¹² Department of Child Health Care, Shanghai Children's Hospital, School of medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China; Shanghai Children's Hospital Dipro Medical Research Center, China. Electronic address: chenjj@shchildren.com.cn.

PMID: 39306968
DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104841

Abstract

Background: Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disease that poses challenges in both early intervention and long-term development for children with DD. However, there is a lack of a standardized and comprehensive tool for the diagnosis of DD in Mainland China.

Aim: To develop a standardized tool (i.e., Developmental Dyslexia Scale for Standard Mandarin [DDSSM]) for the diagnosis of DD in Mainland China and evaluate its reliability and validity.

Methods and procedures: DDSSM consists of 10 subtests. The initial draft was created after Delphi expert consultation, and the final version was revised to improve discriminability with a pilot study involving 450 children from grades 1-3. The reliability and validity were then confirmed with 53 children from grades 1-2.

Outcomes and results: The Delphi expert consultation demonstrated that the expert panel had good authority, and that all agreed on the subtest setup. The DDSSM exhibited great internal consistency. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the model aligns with the theoretical structure (P > 0.05, χ²/df < 2.00, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) < 0.08, comparative fit index (CFI) > 0.90, TLI > 0.90). The Dyslexia Checklist for Chinese Children and children's academic performance agreed well with the DDSSM.

Conclusions and implications: The DDSAM is reliable and valid for assessing and diagnosing DD in Standard Mandarin-speaking primary school children from grades 1-2. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS?: Although a number of scales and tools have been proposed for assessing developmental dyslexia (DD) in Chinese, there is still a lack of diagnostic tools for Mandarin Chinese in Mainland China. In this study, we developed one of the most comprehensive diagnostic tools for DD in Mandarin Chinese for lower graders. We included visual-spatial attention (VA) and compounding awareness (CA), two tests that have been recently suggested as reliable measures for identifying DD in the Chinese language. This assessment tool has been verified for robust reliability and validity. This study also provided confirmation of the core deficits of DD in Chinese, which were orthographic awareness (OA). In addition, VA, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and morphological awareness (MA) were found to be the most important cognitive abilities for word reading in Chinese lower graders in this study.

Keywords: Behavior rating scale; Children; Developmental dyslexia; Diagnosis.