Speech Sound Processing Risk Index (SSPRI)

✨ I had a really thought-provoking conversation this week with Ari Billig about a project that feels desperately needed here in England, where the wait for an ADHD diagnosis can be painfully long.
 

The project, EFSim, is a neuropsychological test designed to assess executive functioning skills in children aged 8 to 13.

In the test, children explore a gamified, home-like environment where a friendly character, Laura the Dragon, gives verbal instructions for everyday tasks such as tidying up, getting ready for school, and remembering steps. The child completes the tasks as best they can.

It feels like play, but it produces objective, scientifically grounded data that correlate strongly with formal ADHD assessments.

When I was later chatting with someone about this, they asked if it is similar to what we will be doing at The Early Dyslexia Screening Centre. They asked me about accuracy of predicting a future dyslexia diagnosis.

And here is where it gets interesting.
 

ADHD is lifelong. You are either assessed as meeting the criteria or you are not. It does not change with intervention or progress. The same is true of autism.
 

But dyslexia is different. The word comes from Greek, with dys- meaning difficulty and lexis meaning words or language. If you are not struggling with reading and spelling, you cannot meet the criteria for a dyslexia diagnosis. No matter how creative, out-of-the-box, or divergent your thinking may be, those traits might link to ADHD, which often co-occurs in older children diagnosed with dyslexia, but they do not equal dyslexia.
 

So we are predicting that no three-year-old children with a high risk index will be diagnosed with dyslexia at age 7+ when screened by us. It is an extension of my work in Australia, where teachers use the 10-day Speech Sound Play Plan in Reception before starting phonics, but we start earlier.
 

Our work as Dyslexia Whisperers focuses on prevention to avoid remediation. We screen children just before they turn three, before they are taught phonics as the kick-start to learning to read and spell. We are not changing who they are or their identity, we are re-routing struggles. We are identifying risk factors in speech sound processing and phonological working memory, and then supporting families so that they are more attuned to their child well before school begins. As Kerry Murphy’s work shows, early attunement is vital. One in four children will start school at risk of reading and spelling difficulties, and then be taught in ways that never address the underlying reasons why. We are saying, let us find out how children learn before we start teaching them to read and spell.
 

As scientists, not just educators, we will track every child we screen to the end of KS1. Our goal? That no matter what the screening shows at age three, by age seven none of those children should struggle with learning to read and spell. Screening is the start. What matters is what we do with that knowledge.
 

Whereas EFSim can identify ADHD with impressive accuracy, our aim is different: to ensure that those who might otherwise be labelled as at risk for dyslexia are never diagnosed as dyslexic.
 

We are in their corner. We are their village. And everything begins through Speech Sound Play.
 

📍 The screener is called SSPRI (Speech Sound Processing Risk Index). It is an early indicator of risk for future reading and spelling difficulties. When we understand the risk, we can teach children to connect letters and sounds in ways that feel like play to their brain and mean that they are never diagnosed as dyslexic.
 

Miss Emma
Emma Hartnell-Baker MEd SEN
The Neurodivergent Reading Whisperer®