Postural control is not systematically related to reading skills: implications for the assessment of balance as a risk factor for developmental dyslexia

Håvard Loras, Hermundur Sigmundsson, Ann-Katrin Stensdotter, Joel B. Talcott

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Impaired postural control has been associated with poor reading skills, as well as with lower performance on measures of attention and motor control variables that frequently co-occur with reading difficulties. Measures of balance and motor control have been incorporated into several screening batteries for developmental dyslexia, but it is unclear whether the relationship between such skills and reading manifests as a behavioural continuum across the range of abilities or is restricted to groups of individuals with specific disorder phenotypes. Here were obtained measures of postural control alongside measures of reading, attention and general cognitive skills in a large sample of young adults (n = 100). Postural control was assessed using centre of pressure (CoP) measurements, obtained over 5 different task conditions. Our results indicate an absence of strong statistical relationships between balance measures with either reading, cognitive or attention measures across the sample as a whole. © 2014 Loras et al.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere98224
Number of pages8
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume9
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 3 Jun 2014

Bibliographical note

© 2014 Loras et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Keywords

  • dyslexia
  • postural balance
  • principal component analysis
  • reading
  • risk factors

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