The process of diagnosing dyslexia varies by age, but is generally done through an evaluation by a psychologist/psychiatrist. Initially, information is gathered from teachers, school psychologists, doctors, speech-language therapists, educational assessment specialists, and results from reading tests (e.g., reading fluency).[1] Another diagnostic approach, called response to intervention (RTI), assesses how quickly the child responds to initial interventions. Children who quickly respond to these interventions are usually not dyslexic, and their reading difficulties are often due to other factors.[2]
Additionally, there are tests that can be performed at a young age to identify potential reading problems at early stages; they are aimed at assessing oral language skills, word recognition, decoding and spelling skills, phonological processing, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension. Some of these tests showed promising results and include predictive assessment of reading (PAR),[3] dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (DIBELS),[3] and the AIMSweb test (the Achievement Improvement Monitoring Screening test).[1]
