Reading Difficulties 257Even if the link is indirectly mediated via attention difficulties, the
resultant comorbidity between SRD and behavioural disorders is consider-
able. Among 10-year-olds in the Isle of Wight study, for example, a third
of children with SRD had disruptive behavioural disorders, and a third
of children with disruptive behavioural disorders had SRD. Subsequent
studies have shown that disruptive behaviour and poor pre-reading skills
are already associated in preschool children. This is long before the child’s
disruptive behaviour could plausibly have interfered with schoolwork or
led to criticism in the classroom – arguing against the notion that disruptive
behaviour can usually be attributed to the frustration and marginalisation
engendered by school failure. Equally, there is no convincing evidence
that being disruptive in the classroom is what stops a child learning
to read.
Follow-up studies suggest that those children with SRD who are free
from additional psychiatric disorders in middle childhood are no more
likely than their peers to develop psychiatric problems in their teens (with
the possible exception of an increased risk of problems with temper control
in adolescent girls with SRD).
When SRD is compounded by disruptive behaviour, the teenage prog-
nosis is worse. These individuals are more likely to leave school at the first
opportunity, obtain no qualifications, take up unskilled work, and have a
poor work record.
Though SRD is associated with a relatively high risk of adverse psy-
chiatric and psychosocial outcomes in childhood and adolescence, follow-
up studies into adulthood suggest that the impact on adult adjustment is
far less marked. Whereas school life centres on reading, adults have the
freedom to adopt occupations and lifestyles that do not depend on reading
skill. Perhaps this is why SRR in adult life does not lead to more psychiatric
or social problems.
Subject review
Snowling MJ, Hulme C. (2008) Reading and other specific learning diffi-
culties.In: Rutter Met al.(eds)Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,5th
edn. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, pp. 802–819.
Further reading
Annett Met al. (1996) Types of dyslexia and the shift to dextrality.Journal
of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 37 , 167–180. (This paper discusses
Annett’s genetic model of handedness and brain lateralisation and their
possible relationship to reading difficulties.)
Carroll JMet al. (2005) Literacy difficulties and psychiatric disorders:
Evidence for comorbidity.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46 ,
524–532.