Emergent bilinguals (EBs) who are exposed to societal language at school but use another language at home may experience difficulties in mastering the societal language, especially those at risk for language and reading disabilities. Learning phonologically specific new words that discriminate between phonemes may foster phonological awareness and word reading. This study examined the effectiveness of a lexical specificity intervention program that targeted phoneme discrimination in EBs at risk for reading disabilities. EBs who scored below the 25th percentile on the screening measures were selected and randomly assigned to one of two conditions: at-risk intervention or at-risk control. Of the 76 EBs in the at-risk group, 40 were randomly assigned to receive the intervention. A group of 51 typically developing EBs who did not meet the risk criteria were selected as typical controls. The pre- and post-tests include phoneme discrimination, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, fluency, and decoding. The at-risk intervention group showed improvement on the phoneme discrimination task after the intervention and outperformed the at-risk control group but not the typical control group. In addition, growth was observed during both the training and testing sessions of the intervention. The lexical specificity intervention could be a good resource to enhance a key precursor to literacy development for at-risk EBs.

The present study compares the patterns of growth of beginning reading skills (i.e., phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension) of Spanish speaking monolingual students who received a Tier 2 reading intervention with students who did not receive the intervention. All the students in grades K-2 were screened at the beginning of the year to confirm their risk status. A quasi-experimental longitudinal design was used: the treatment group received a supplemental program in small groups of 3 to 5 students, for 30 minutes daily from November to June. The control group did not receive it. All students were assessed three times during the academic year. A hierarchical linear growth modeling was conducted and differences on growth rate were found in vocabulary in kindergarten (p < .001; variance explained = 77.0%), phonemic awareness in kindergarten (p < .001; variance explained = 43.7%) and first grade (p < .01; variance explained = 15.2%), and finally we also find significant growth differences for second grade in oral reading fluency (p < .05; variance explained = 15.1%) and retell task (p < .05; variance explained = 14.5%). Children at risk for reading disabilities in Spanish can improve their skills when they receive explicit instruction in the context of Response to Intervention (RtI). Findings are discussed for each skill in the context of implementing a Tier 2 small group intervention within an RtI approach. Implications for practice in the Spanish educational context are also discussed for children who are struggling with reading.

There are increasing demands in schools to provide social–emotional learning opportunities for students. This article reports on the utility of a universal coping skills program for young people at risk for depression in a rural context. The study deals specifically with the utility of the Best of Coping (BOC) program implemented to all students in Year 9 with a view to examining the benefits for students at-risk for depression. Two cohorts of Year 9 students (N = 159) participated in the program across 2006–07. Program effects were evaluated using the Adolescent Coping Scale and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale and qualitative interviews. Successful intervention with the BOC was found to help students at-risk decrease dependence on Non-Productive coping strategies and reduce risk for negative mental health outcomes. Findings demonstrated that those in greatest need were able to benefit from a universal intervention program.

Nicotinic receptor loss has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. The present study investigated the effects of chronic low-dose transdermal nicotine in a cohort of nondemented, healthy volunteers (mean age 63 years). The majority of subjects (85%) had a first-degree relation with dementia. Subjects were tested using a before, during, and after design on a battery of tests known to be sensitive to early cognitive decline. A mixed pattern of results was seen, with significant changes occurring with verbal learning, object learning, delayed recall, and word retrieval. Nicotine had no effect on measures of concentration or psychomotor speed. The effects were most noticeable in subjects at the lower end of baseline test performance on the tasks used. The results are discussed with reference to the relationship between strategic nicotinic receptor loss and measurable psychometric change. The potential therapeutic role of nicotinic agonists in preclinical “at risk” individuals is supported by the results of this study.

The literacy skills of 56 school leavers from the Bishop and Edmundson (1987) cohort of preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) were assessed at 15 years. The SLI group performed worse on tests of reading, spelling, and reading comprehension than age-matched controls and the literacy outcomes were particularly poor for those with Performance IQ less than 100. The rate of specific reading retardation in the SLI group had increased between the ages of 8½ and 15 years and there had been a substantial drop in reading accuracy, relative to age. However, over 35% had reading skills within the normal range and those who had had isolated impairments of expressive phonology had a particularly good outcome. Our findings highlight the limitations of discrepancy definitions of dyslexia that do not take account of the changing demands of reading over time. We argue that children's phonological difficulties place them at risk of literacy failure at the outset of reading and that later, impairments of other language skills compromise development to adult levels of fluency.