Introduction:

early detection of difficulties in learning to read and write is key to starting intervention programs as soon as possible. But to detect these difficulties it is necessary to have tools with proven efficiency. Aims: the objective of this study was to validate a test developed with linguistic tasks related to reading, applied three years ago to 298 children with the aim of detecting possible difficulties before learning to read.

Material and method:

a total of 190 children from that initial sample were evaluated when they were 7 years old with two reading tasks, one with real words and other with invented words. From each child, accuracy, speed and reading efficiency data were collected.

Results:

despite the three years elapsed, a highly significant correlation, using the Pearson coefficient, was found between the early detection battery scores and the reading test scores. In addition, half of the children who had been classified as at-risk children because of low scores on that battery had serious reading problems.

Conclusions:

the early detection of reading difficulties test, which is being widely used both by pediatricians and by nursery school teachers, due to its quick and easy application, has a strong empirical support. Although it is not a diagnostic test of dyslexia, it is capable of alerting about possible future difficulties in learning to read.

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