Professor Margaret (Maggie) Snowling

Affiliation 

University of Oxford

Bio 

Professor Maggie Snowling is President of St. John’s College and Professor of Psychology, University of Oxford. She is also professionally qualified as a clinical psychologist. She is Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She served on Sir Jim Rose’s Expert Advisory Group on provision for Dyslexia (2009), was advisor to the Phonics Screening Check (2011) and Reception Baseline Assessment (2019) in England.  She was appointed CBE for services to science and the understanding of dyslexia in 2016.

Abstract

‘Dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorder – Who is at-risk and why? ’

This talk will present findings from a longitudinal study of children at high-risk of dyslexia either because of preschool speech and language difficulties or because of a first degree affected relative, followed from age 3 to 9 years.  A focus on the preschool language profiles suggests that there are shared risk factors between familial dyslexia and language impairment.  The developmental picture is however more complex.  It will be argued, in line with the critical age hypothesis, that children who enter school with a persistent speech or language impairment are most at risk of reading problems.  A dyslexia outcome is associated with persistently poor phonology whereas children with DLD show more general language impairments from an early stage associated later with poor reading comprehension and poor mathematical skills.