Predicting responsiveness to intervention in dyslexia using dynamic assessment Sebastián Aravena a,b,c, ⁎, Jurgen Tijms a,b,c , Patrick Snellings a,c , Maurits W. van der Molen a,c a Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129B, 1018 WT Amsterdam, The Netherlands b IWAL Institute, Amsterdam, Tweede Hugo de Grootstraat 45a, 1052 LB, The Netherlands c Rudolf Berlin Center, Amsterdam, Valckenierstraat 65-67, 1018 XE, The Netherlands abstract article info Article history: Received 13 June 2015 Received in revised form 30 March 2016 Accepted 24 June 2016 Available online xxxx In the current study we examined the value of a dynamic test for predicting responsiveness to reading interven- tion for children diagnosed with dyslexia. The test consisted of a 20-minute training aimed at learning eight basic letter–speech sound correspondences within an artificial orthography, followed by a short assessment of both mastery of these correspondences and word reading ability in this unfamiliar script. Fifty-five (7- to 11-year- old) children diagnosed with dyslexia engaged in specialized intervention during approximately 10 months and their reading and spelling abilities were assessed before and after. Our results indicated that the dynamic test predicted variance in reading skills at posttest, over and above traditional static measures, such as phonolog- ical awareness and rapid naming. These findings indicate that responsiveness to learning new letter–speech sound correspondences has a prognostic value for the success of specialized reading intervention. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Dyslexia Dynamic assessment Letter–speech sound learning Treatment success Response to intervention (RTI) 1. Introduction Developmental dyslexia, henceforth referred to as dyslexia, is char- acterized by a specific and significant impairment in the automatic rec- ognition of written words (Fletcher & Lyon, 2008; Peterson & Pennington, 2012; Snowling, 2012). There is ample evidence that spe- cialized intervention is effective in ameliorating reading and spelling proficiency of children with dyslexia (see Galuschka, Ise, Krick, & Schulte-Körne, 2014 for an overview). Unfortunately, not all dyslexic readers benefit to the same extent and there is a substantial amount of non-responders as well (Galuschka et al., 2014; Singleton, 2009; Torgesen, 2005). Gaining more insight into factors that can predict re- sponsiveness to intervention in dyslexia would be very welcome as it could help us to identify nonresponders at an early stage and, by doing so, to prevent wasting time, effort, and resources on interventions that are not effective. A framework that is particularly important in this context is re- sponse to intervention (RTI), which is a common practice in educational settings across the United States and several European countries nowa- days. RTI is an approach in which a tutor provides a pupil with progres- sively intense and individualized tiers of instruction with the aim of finding the best possible way to educate children and of identifying children with learning disabilities (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006; Grigorenko, 2009; Gustafson, Svensson, & Fälth, 2014). Pupils who do not respond to Tier 1 receive more intensive and individualized instruction within Tier 2, and those who are unresponsive to Tier 2 proceed with even more rigorous instruction within Tier 3. Depending on the educational system, the framework is sometimes complemented by a fourth tier, which consists of placement in special education or referral to assess- ment and therapy within the health care system. Although many pupils benefit from RTI as they receive high-quality instruction as soon as learning difficulties arise, the notion that inter- vention should initially be of modest intensity has been questioned (Denton et al., 2011; Vaughn, Denton, & Fletcher, 2010). Especially the value of Tier 2 intervention for the most learning disabled continues to be a subject to debate (Compton et al., 2012; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Compton, 2010). Indeed, there is evidence that engaging in less inten- sive tiers of intervention may not be effective for addressing the reading difficulties of children with dyslexia (Vaughn et al., 2010). Early identi- fication of nonresponders could thus potentially improve their chance to benefit from intervention by intensifying initial intervention. A convenient starting point for identifying factors predicting inter- vention success would be to focus on the standard assessment of dys- lexia, which typically consists of a combination of reading and writing tasks along with a set of phonology-related tasks, such as phonological awareness, rapid naming, and verbal short-term memory, as well as some general cognitive measures. Indeed, several studies indicate that some of these factors, among which poor phonological awareness in Learning and Individual Differences 49 (2016) 209–215 ⁎ Corresponding author at: IWAL Institute, Amsterdam, Tweede Hugo de Grootstraat 45a, 1052 LB, The Netherlands. E-mail address: s.aravena@uva.nl (S. Aravena). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2016.06.024 1041-6080/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Learning and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif