Some experimental results on the role of speed and accuracy of reading in psychometric tests.

According to the Italian Parliament act (n. 170/2010) that recognizesdyslexia as a physical disturbance, of neurobiological origin, dyslexic children in primary school should be early recognized, in order to asses a targeted intervention within the school and to start a teaching that respects the difficulties in learning to read, to write and to perform calculations. Screening procedures inside the primaryschools aimed at detecting children with difficulties in reading, are not so common in Italy as in other European countries. Nevertheless, screening procedures are of fundamental importance for guaranteeing an early detection of dyslexic children and reducing both the primary negative effects - on learning - and the secondary negative effects - on the development of the personality - of this disturbance. In thisstudy we analyze the validity, from a statistical point of view, of a screening procedure recently proposed in the psychometric literature (Stella et al., 2011). This procedure is very fast (it is exactly one minute long), simple, cheap and can be dispensed by teachers without psychometric experience. On the contrary, the currentlyused tests are much longer and must be provided by skilled teachers. These two major flaw prevent the widespread use of these tests. If the new procedure is found to be reliable, it can be provided to each student in primary school and it can also be repeated in time, in order to monitor the children difficulties. The validity of the procedure and the benchmark with two currently used tests are studied on the thebasis of the results of a survey on about 1500 students attending primary school.