Evaluating Current Deficit Theories of Poor Reading: Role of Phonological Processing, Naming Speed, Balance Automaticity, Rapid Verbal Perception and Working Memory

2005 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Savage ◽  
Ulla Patni ◽  
Norah Frederickson ◽  
Roz Goodwin ◽  
Nicola Smith ◽  
...  

To clarify the nature of cognitive deficits experienced by poor readers, 9 10-yr.-old poor readers were matched against 9 chronological age and 9 younger reading age-matched controls screened and selected from regular classrooms. Poor readers performed significantly more poorly than chronological age-matched peers on digit naming speed, spoonerisms, and nonsense word reading. Poor readers were also significantly poorer than reading age-matched controls on nonword reading but were significantly better than reading age-matched controls on postural stability. Analyses of effect sizes were consistent with these findings, showing strong effects for digit naming speed, spoonerisms, and nonword reading. However, effect size analysis also suggested that poor readers experienced moderate difficulties with balance automatisation but did not show verbal speech perception deficits relative to either control group.

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 1442-1451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroko Tanaka ◽  
Jessica M. Black ◽  
Charles Hulme ◽  
Leanne M. Stanley ◽  
Shelli R. Kesler ◽  
...  

Although the role of IQ in developmental dyslexia remains ambiguous, the dominant clinical and research approaches rely on a definition of dyslexia that requires reading skill to be significantly below the level expected given an individual’s IQ. In the study reported here, we used functional MRI (fMRI) to examine whether differences in brain activation during phonological processing that are characteristic of dyslexia were similar or dissimilar in children with poor reading ability who had high IQ scores (discrepant readers) and in children with poor reading ability who had low IQ scores (nondiscrepant readers). In two independent samples including a total of 131 children, using univariate and multivariate pattern analyses, we found that discrepant and nondiscrepant poor readers exhibited similar patterns of reduced activation in brain areas such as left parietotemporal and occipitotemporal regions. These results converge with behavioral evidence indicating that, regardless of IQ, poor readers have similar kinds of reading difficulties in relation to phonological processing.


1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna K. Uhry ◽  
Margaret Jo Shepherd

This training study combines within-subjects comparisons of several literacy tasks with individual case studies of children with dyslexia over a five-month reading intervention. It was hypothesized that 12 first- and second-grade children with deficits in phonological processing could be taught to use phonological recoding strategies through direct-instruction tutorials. Training included (a) phonological awareness in the form of instruction in segmenting and spelling, (b) letter-sound associations, and (c) guided reading using both phonics-controlled and narrative-controlled text. As a group, the children made significant gains in standard scores on sight-word reading, nonword reading, and spelling. After training, contrary to previous descriptions of children with dyslexia, nonword reading was at least as strong as sight-word reading for the group and for eight of the 12 individual children. There was a great deal of variation in individual response to treatment, with less progress for children with concomitant deficits in phonological awareness and phonological coding in lexical access as measured by rapid continuous, or serial, naming.


2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
ADÈLE LAFRANCE ◽  
ALEXANDRA GOTTARDO

French/English bilingual children (N=40) in French language schools participated in an 8-month longitudinal study of the relation between phonological processing skills and reading in French and English. Participants were administered measures of phonological awareness, working memory, naming speed, and reading in both languages. The results of the concurrent analyses show that phonological awareness skills in both French and English were uniquely predictive of reading performance in both languages after accounting for the influences of cognitive ability, reading ability, working memory, and naming speed. These findings support the hypothesis that phonological awareness is strongly related to beginning word reading skill in an alphabetic orthography. The results of the longitudinal analyses also suggest that orthographic depth influences phonological factors related to reading.


2020 ◽  
pp. 002221942094928
Author(s):  
Jeanne Wanzek ◽  
Stephanie Al Otaiba ◽  
Yaacov Petscher ◽  
Christopher J. Lemons ◽  
Samantha A. Gesel ◽  
...  

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of providing mindset intervention in addition to reading intervention compared with only reading intervention for fourth graders with reading difficulties. Reading intervention was provided daily in 45 min sessions throughout the school year. Mindset intervention occurred in small groups for 24–30 min lessons. Multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) via n-level SEM was used to account for the latent variable representation of constructs, and the complex nesting and cross-classification structure of the data. Students in the reading intervention plus mindset condition significantly outperformed the business as usual condition on nonword reading ( d = 0.35) as did students in the reading intervention condition ( d = 0.20), who also outperformed the business as usual condition on phonological processing ( d = 0.28). There were no significant differences among students in the three conditions on nonword reading, word reading, phonological processing, reading comprehension, or growth mindset. Initial reading achievement, mindset, and problem behavior did not generally moderate these findings.


1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 500-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Williams

To explore the relationship between reading and lipreading and to determine whether readers and lipreaders use similar strategies to comprehend verbal messages, 60 female junior and sophomore high school students—30 good and 30 poor readers—were given a filmed lipreading test, a test to measure eye-voice span, a test of cloze ability, and a test of their ability to comprehend printed material presented one word at a time in the absence of an opportunity to regress or scan ahead. The results of this study indicated that (a) there is a significant relationship between reading and lipreading ability; (b) although good readers may be either good or poor lipreaders, poor readers are more likely to be poor than good lipreaders; (c) there are similarities in the strategies used by readers and lipreaders in their approach to comprehending spoken and written material; (d) word-by-word reading of continuous prose appears to be a salient characteristic of both poor reading and poor lipreading ability; and (c) good readers and lipreaders do not engage in word-by-word reading but rather use a combination of visual and linguistic cues to interpret written and spoken messages.


Author(s):  
Jelena Zarić ◽  
Telse Nagler

AbstractPrevious studies mostly examined the role of orthographic knowledge in basic reading processing (i.e., word-reading), however, regarding higher reading processing (i.e., sentence- and text-comprehension), mixed results were reported. In addition, previous research in transparent languages, such as German, focused mostly on typically skilled readers. The aim of this study was to examine the role of orthographic knowledge in basic reading processing (word-reading) as well as in higher reading processing (sentence- and text-comprehension), in addition to phonological awareness and naming speed in a sample of German elementary school poor readers. For this purpose, data from 103 German third-graders with poor reading proficiency were analyzed via multiple linear regression analysis. Analyses revealed that orthographic knowledge contributes to reading at word- and sentence-level, but not at text-level in German third-graders with poor reading proficiency, over and above phonological awareness and naming speed. These findings support that orthographic knowledge should be considered as a relevant reading related predictor. Therefore, it would be reasonable to include the assessment of orthographic knowledge skills in diagnostic procedures to identify children at risk to develop reading difficulties, besides phonological awareness and naming speed.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine M. Marshall ◽  
Margaret J. Snowling ◽  
Peter J. Bailey

According to a prominent theory, the phonological difficulties in dyslexia are caused by an underlying general impairment in the ability to process sequences of rapidly presented, brief sounds. Two studies examined this theory by exploring the relationships between rapid auditory processing and phonological processing in a sample of 82 normally reading children (Study 1) and by comparing 17 children with dyslexia to chronological-age and reading-age control participants on these tasks (Study 2). In the normal readers, moderate correlations were found between the measure of rapid auditory processing (Auditory Repetition Task, or ART) and phonological ability. On the ART, the dyslexia group performed at a level similar to that of the reading-age control group but obtained scores that were significantly below those of the chronological-age control group. This difference was due to a subgroup of 4 children in the dyslexia group who had particular difficulty with the ART. The phonological skills of these individuals were not worse than those of the children in the dyslexia group who were unimpaired on the ART. The discussion argues that there is no evidence that phonological difficulties are secondary to impairments of rapid auditory processing, as measured by the ART, and highlights the need to examine the strategic and cognitive demands involved in tasks of rapid auditory processing.


1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Usha Goswami ◽  
Peter Bryant

Recent research in reading disability has been strengthened by the addition of a reading level (RL) control group to the more traditional chronological age (CA) control group. However, caution is required in interpreting results from these two kinds of control. Only positive results in a RL match and negative results in a CA match are interpretable; negative results in a CA match and positive results in a RL match are not. Furthermore, the RL control group cannot be used to unambiguously determine between specific deficit and developmental lag interpretations of reading disability. It is argued that the use of the RL control can only ever be a first step in research aimed at delineating the causal factors in reading backwardness.


2002 ◽  
pp. 461-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Lasco ◽  
S Cannavo ◽  
A Gaudio ◽  
N Morabito ◽  
G Basile ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effects of a 6 month administration of raloxifene hydrochloride, a selective estrogen receptor modulator which was recently approved for the prevention of osteoporosis, on serum gonadotropin and prolactin (PRL) levels and on TRH-stimulated PRL responsiveness in postmenopausal women who have not undergone estrogen replacement therapy. DESIGN AND METHODS: Sixteen healthy postmenopausal women were divided into two groups on the basis of their bone status, evaluated by dual energy X-ray absorptiometry at the lumbar level. Eight women (chronological age 52.4+/-4.1 (s.d.) years, menopausal age 42.4+/-3.9 years), in whom T-score L2-L4 was less than -2.5 s.d., were treated with raloxifene (60 mg p.o.) administered daily for 6 months (group 1), while the other eight women (chronological age 52.6+/-2.5 years, menopausal age 42.1+/-3.6 years), in whom the T-score L2-L4 ranged between -1 and -2.5 s.d., were used as a control group (group 2). Serum PRL, FSH, LH and 17beta-estradiol (E2) levels were evaluated at baseline and after 3 and 6 months of treatment. In all subjects, PRL responsiveness to TRH (200 microg i.v.) administration was evaluated at baseline and at the end of the study. RESULTS: At baseline, mean PRL, LH and FSH levels were not significantly different in the two groups (PRL 133.6+/-21.7 vs 136.7+/-28.1 mIU/l (NS), LH 25.1+/-6.8 vs 24.4+/-6.7 mIU/ml (NS), FSH 74.4+/-25.0 vs 71.1+/-24.1 mIU/ml (NS), in group 1 and group 2 respectively). No significant variations in serum FSH and LH values, in either group, or in serum PRL levels in group 2, were observed at the 3 and 6 month examinations. On the contrary, serum PRL values decreased significantly in group 1 after 3 months (100.1+/-47.7 mIU/l, P<0.05) and 6 months (81.5+/-30.2 mIU/l, P<0.001). At baseline, no significant differences were observed in the TRH-stimulated serum PRL peak between the groups (1015.4+/-30.5 vs 1030.2+/-25.7 mIU/l in group 1 and in group 2 respectively), while it decreased significantly at the 6 month examination in group 1 (770.5+/-47.4 mIU/l, P<0.001) and it was significantly lower than in group 2 (1068.1+/-301.8 mIU/l, P=0.02). Serum E2 was not detected at baseline and at each examination, in all patients. CONCLUSIONS: The decrease of PRL values induced by long-term raloxifene administration in postmenopausal women could be explained by a direct antiestrogenic effect of raloxifene on lactotrope cells or by the recently suggested increase of opiatergic tone on the hypothalamic-pituitary region.


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