Task-focused behaviour and mothers' causal attributions in relation to dyslexia : a follow-up from age 8 to age 20

Abstract

Children with dyslexia tend to find reading stressful. Coping responses, such as task-focused and avoidant behaviours, can help mitigate the stress. Task-focused behaviour is associated with reading development, with others’ at-tributions of success and failure linked to task-focused behaviour. The present study aims to examine whether differences in task-focused behaviour between those with dyslexia and those without dyslexia exist in childhood (age 8) and persist in adolescence (age 15) and early adulthood (age 20). The study also aimed to understand the relationship between mothers’ causal attributions of their 15-year-old adolescents’ school successes and fail-ures and task-focused behaviour assessed at the three timepoints. The sample consisted of 184 participants, from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dys-lexia (JLD), categorised into three groups - dyslexics, typical readers at-risk for dyslexia, and the control group. Results showed that task-focused behaviour was slightly stable from age 8 to age 15, but not from age 15 to 20. Although, differences between the dys-lexic and control group were found in task-focused behaviour at age 8, these differences did not persist in age 15 and 20. Additionally, some correlations emerged between mothers’ causal attributions of success and failure and task-focused behaviour assessed at age 8 and 15; but, not with task-focused behav-iour at age 20. Group differences emerged only on ability and effort attribu-tions of success. These findings imply that task-focused behaviour changes over time and that mothers’ attributions of success and failure may cease to be related to one’s task-focused behaviour as one becomes older.