{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02664188351920694, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007434944237918215, 'mean_word_length': 5.245647969052224, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Dutch Dyslexia Programme.

In the mid 1990s, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) published a memorandum under the title ‘Knowledge enriches’ to stimulate studies with a strong emphasis on innovative, multidisciplinary research, which focused on problems arising in society. Taking one of the themes, language pathology, as starting point, researchers from linguistics, (special) education, psychology, neurology and child psychiatry gathered with Frans Zwarts as chairman. Coincidently, in 1995 the Dutch Health Council had published an extensive report on ‘Dyslexia: identification and treatment’. It was clear to the committee that developmental dyslexia fitted all the obligatory conditions advocated by NWO. Moreover, within the domain of language pathology, it was the most prevalent disorder. The programme ‘Identifying the core features of developmental dyslexia: a multidisciplinary approach’ was born, later known under the title Dutch Dyslexia Programme (DDP). The Universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and the Radboud University Nijmegen joined forces to execute the programme. Because dyslexia is a largely hereditary developmental disorder, one of the ambitions was to design a longitudinal study starting very early in life. In particular, the possibility to study very young infants using electroencephalography (EEG) was innovative at that point in time. We wanted to follow the development of babies who came from dyslexic families till they had received enough years of formal instruction in reading to identify whether they were dyslexic or not, in comparison with control children with no such background. However, such a study takes time to design and organise. In December 1999, at the dawn of a new century, the first baby entered the lab at the age of 2months, in the 3 years to follow joined by more than 300 others. Years went by spent on practical activities such as getting the babies to the lab, data collection and keeping the parents (and, in due time, the children) motivated to bring them in. From 2006 onwards, publications appeared, first on the results of EEG, followed by studies relating early neurophysiological and cognitive markers to later reading outcome. The first paper of this special issue, authored by Aryan van der Leij, Elsje van Bergen, Titia van Zuijen, Peter de Jong, Natasha Maurits and Ben Maassen, reviews these studies and relates the findings to other studies. Although the largest, the longitudinal study was only part of the multidisciplinary programme. A study on molecular genetics was started as well. In order to trace genetic factors involved in dyslexia, genetic material from 300 adult sib pairs was gathered, a sample separate from the parents who took part in the longitudinal study. In contrast to the longitudinal study, of which there were (and still are) relatively few (in particular when early measured EEGs are involved), many studies have addressed the question of candidate genes that may contribute to dyslexia susceptibility. In the second paper, Amaia Carrion-Catillo, Barbara Franke and Simon Fisher give an extensive overview of the state of the art, also highlighting the past, present and future contributions of the DDP.