Can’t See the Words for the Letters: Whole Word Processing in Adolescents and a Novel “Visual” Intervention for Dyslexia

<p>Individuals with developmental dyslexia, considered as a group, perform poorly on tasks that involve phonological analysis, such as applying sight-sound rules to read new words, or analysing words into their component sounds (De Groot, Huettig, & Olivers, 2016; Temple & Marshall, 1983). However, dyslexia is also associated with other types of difficulties. For example, in some individuals, reading latencies increase disproportionately with the length of the word (De Luca, Barca, Burani, & Zoccolotti, 2008; Spinelli et al., 2005) suggesting they may have difficulties recognising familiar words as whole units (“whole word” processing). This thesis examined the relationship between the word length effect and overall reading proficiency in a diverse sample of 49 adolescents. We found that the length effect was a unique predictor of reading proficiency, even after factoring out variance in phonological skills (measured using a nonword reading task). We also tested the recent hypothesis that visual attention span - the number of letters a reader can capture in a single glance - is important for efficient whole word reading (Bosse, Tainturier, & Valdois, 2007). Contrary to this hypothesis, we found no association between the word length effect and scores on a standard measure of visual attention span (a partial report task). We also explored whether reading-delayed adolescents could benefit from an intervention targeting their specific cognitive profile. Five cases demonstrating a selective difficulty with either “phonological” or “whole word” skills completed two interventions. One targeted phonological skills: participants were trained to recognise and apply common sight-sound correspondences. The other targeted whole word skills: we reasoned that training participants to recognise commonly-occurring letter redundancies (e.g. ogue: rogue, synagogue, dialogue) could reduce the load on parallel letter processing. Only one of the five cases showed greater improvement in (untrained) word reading accuracy following their “target” intervention. However, four of the five showed intervention-specific improvements in reading latency. These results suggest that it could be valuable to consider heterogeneity when treating reading delay.</p>

Can’t See the Words for the Letters: Whole Word Processing in Adolescents and a Novel “Visual” Intervention for Dyslexia

<p>Individuals with developmental dyslexia, considered as a group, perform poorly on tasks that involve phonological analysis, such as applying sight-sound rules to read new words, or analysing words into their component sounds (De Groot, Huettig, & Olivers, 2016; Temple & Marshall, 1983). However, dyslexia is also associated with other types of difficulties. For example, in some individuals, reading latencies increase disproportionately with the length of the word (De Luca, Barca, Burani, & Zoccolotti, 2008; Spinelli et al., 2005) suggesting they may have difficulties recognising familiar words as whole units (“whole word” processing). This thesis examined the relationship between the word length effect and overall reading proficiency in a diverse sample of 49 adolescents. We found that the length effect was a unique predictor of reading proficiency, even after factoring out variance in phonological skills (measured using a nonword reading task). We also tested the recent hypothesis that visual attention span - the number of letters a reader can capture in a single glance - is important for efficient whole word reading (Bosse, Tainturier, & Valdois, 2007). Contrary to this hypothesis, we found no association between the word length effect and scores on a standard measure of visual attention span (a partial report task). We also explored whether reading-delayed adolescents could benefit from an intervention targeting their specific cognitive profile. Five cases demonstrating a selective difficulty with either “phonological” or “whole word” skills completed two interventions. One targeted phonological skills: participants were trained to recognise and apply common sight-sound correspondences. The other targeted whole word skills: we reasoned that training participants to recognise commonly-occurring letter redundancies (e.g. ogue: rogue, synagogue, dialogue) could reduce the load on parallel letter processing. Only one of the five cases showed greater improvement in (untrained) word reading accuracy following their “target” intervention. However, four of the five showed intervention-specific improvements in reading latency. These results suggest that it could be valuable to consider heterogeneity when treating reading delay.</p>

The Design and Validation of an Azeri Phonological Test for Children Aged 4-6 Years

Objectives: Since there is no reliable and valid tool to assess all features of children’s phonological skills whose first language is Azeri, speech-language pathologists usually use informal or Persian instruments. So, it is essential to develop a tool in Azeri language for assessing articulation and phonological skills. For this reason, this study aimed to develop an Azeri Phonological Test (APT) and then determine the validity and reliability of this test in 4-6 years old children whose first language is Azeri. Methods: Participants were 77 (41 boys and 36 girls; 4-6 years old) typically-developing children. They were selected by cluster sampling method. Firstly, Tabriz City in Iran was geographically divided into three sections, namely south, north, and center. Then, the kindergartens of each area were randomly selected for sampling. The participants were assigned into 2 groups: 48-60 months (n=38) and 61-72 months (n=39) old. To assess the phonological skills, nine stories were designed. An expert panel with 15 speech-language pathologists investigated the content validity of the stories. Then the psychometric characteristics of the APT, including reliability (test-retest reliability, inter-rater, and internal consistency) and validity (construct –known group validity), were assessed. The statistical tests used were intraclass correlation coefficient (intra-rater reliability and test-retest), Kuder-Richardson 21 (internal consistency), and the independent samples t-test (known-groups validity). Results: The content validity of the whole test was 0.91. Construct validity evaluation showed that age affects the test scores but not gender. There was a significant correlation between the results of test-retest and inter-rater reliability, and also, the test had a high internal consistency. Discussion: Based on the findings, APT is a reliable and valid test for assessing the abilities of 4-6 years old children in terms of the production of sounds in the context of retelling stories.

Speech and language impairments in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia: A systematic review

Although behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is classically defined by behavioral and socio-emotional changes, impairments often extend to other cognitive functions. These include early speech and language deficits related to the disease's core neural disruptions. Yet, their scope and clinical relevance remains poorly understood. This systematic review characterizes such disturbances in bvFTD, considering clinically, neuroanatomically, genetically, and neuropathologically defined subgroups. We included 181 experimental studies, with at least 5 bvFTD patients diagnosed using accepted criteria, comparing speech and language outcomes between bvFTD patients and healthy controls or between bvFTD subgroups. Results reveal extensive and heterogeneous deficits across cohorts, with (a) consistent lexico-semantic, orthographic, and prosodic impairments; (b) inconsistent deficits in motor speech and grammar; and (c) relative preservation of phonological skills. Also, preliminary findings suggest that the severity of speech and language deficits might be associated with global cognitive impairment, predominantly temporal or fronto-temporal atrophy and MAPT mutations (vs C9orf72). Although under-recognized, these impairments contribute to patient characterization and phenotyping, while potentially informing diagnosis and prognosis.

Neurocognitive Predictors of Response to Intervention With GraphoGame Rime

This study explores the neurocognitive predictors of response to intervention with GraphoGame Rime (GG Rime), an adaptive software game designed to aid the learning of English phonics. A cohort of 398 children (aged 6–7 years) who had participated in a recent randomised controlled trial (RCT) of GG Rime in the United Kingdom were studied. Half were randomly assigned to play GG Rime and the other half were assigned to Business As Usual (BAU). A series of pretests were given prior to the intervention to all participants, designed to measure phonological awareness skills, executive function (EF) skills and the ability to synchronise finger tapping to a rhythmic beat. Rhythmic synchronisation has been linked to reading readiness and early reading attainment, and is related to phonological awareness. Individual differences prior to the intervention in all three types of measure were significantly associated with progression through the game. Gender was also important for progression through the game, with boys progressing significantly further than girls. Vocabulary was not a predictor of progression through the game. Playing time, rhythmic synchronisation, phonological skills and EF skills did not differ by gender. Once playing time and non-verbal cognitive ability were controlled, phonological awareness, EF, rhythmic synchronisation and gender all remained significant predictors of progression through the game. In further analyses comparing these predictors, their interactions and controlling for the autoregressor of prior responsiveness to phonics instruction, phoneme awareness and EF skills were the strongest unique predictors. Analyses with the whole cohort (analysing BAU and GG children independently) showed that all neurocognitive measures contributed to progress in reading and spelling over the school year. We conclude that individual differences in phonological skills and EF skills predict which children will benefit most from computer assisted reading interventions like GG Rime. Further, boys respond better to this computerised intervention than girls. Accordingly, to be maximally beneficial to poor readers, the supplementary use of GG Rime in addition to ongoing classroom literacy instruction could be especially targeted to boys, but should be accompanied by a focus on developing both oral phonological awareness and EF skills.

Efficacy of the Treatment of Developmental Language Disorder: A Systematic Review

Background. Language disorder is the most frequent developmental disorder in childhood and it has a significant negative impact on children’s development. The goal of the present review was to systematically analyze the effectiveness of interventions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from an evidence-based perspective. Methods. We considered systematic reviews, meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), control group cohort studies on any type of intervention aimed at improving children’s skills in the phono-articulatory, phonological, semantic-lexical, and morpho-syntactic fields in preschool and primary school children (up to eight years of age) that were diagnosed with DLD. We identified 27 full-length studies, 26 RCT and one review. Results. Early intensive intervention in three- and four-year-old children has a positive effect on phonological expressive and receptive skills and acquisitions are maintained in the medium term. Less evidence is available on the treatment of expressive vocabulary (and no evidence on receptive vocabulary). Intervention on morphological and syntactic skills has effective results on expressive (but not receptive) skills; however, a number of inconsistent results have also been reported. Only one study reports a positive effect of treatment on inferential narrative skills. Limited evidence is also available on the treatment of meta-phonological skills. More studies investigated the effectiveness of interventions on general language skills, which now appears as a promising area of investigation, even though results are not all consistent. Conclusions. The effectiveness of interventions over expressive and receptive phonological skills, morpho-syntactic skills, as well as inferential skills in narrative context underscores the importance that these trainings be implemented in children with DLD.

Phonological Awareness across Child Populations: How Bilingualism and Dyslexia Interact

Phonological awareness is a complex and multifaceted skill which plays an essential role in the development of an individual’s language and literacy abilities. Phonological skills are indeed dramatically impaired in people with dyslexia, at any age and across languages, whereas their development in bilinguals is less clear. In addition, the interaction between bilingualism and dyslexia in this domain is still under-investigated. The aim of this paper is to provide new experimental evidence on this topic by exploring the phonological competence in Italian of monolingual and bilingual children with and without dyslexia. To this purpose, we developed three tasks, assessing nonword repetition, rhyme detection and spoonerisms, which we administered to 148 10-year-old children in two distinct studies. In Study 1, we found that two groups of L2 Italian typically developing bilinguals, having either Arabic or Romanian as L1, performed similarly to Italian monolinguals in all measures, pointing to absence of both bilingualism-related and L1-related effects in these tasks. In Study 2, we administered the same tasks to four groups of children: Italian monolinguals with dyslexia, Italian monolingual typically developing children, L2 Italian bilinguals with dyslexia and L2 Italian bilingual typically developing children. Results showed that children with dyslexia, both monolingual and bilingual, exhibited significantly more difficulties than typically developing children in all three tasks, whereas bilinguals, consistent with Study 1, performed similarly to their monolingual peers. In addition, no negative effects of bilingualism in dyslexia were found, indicating that being bilingual does not provide additional difficulties to children with dyslexia.

Early screening of reading and writing difficulties in the first grade - a pilot study

ABSTRACT Purpose: to investigate the effectiveness of an early identification screening based on the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) test, 6th edition, to early identify first graders at risk of dyslexia. Methods: the sample comprised 34 children assessed at two moments - the screening was conducted while they were in the first grade, while a word dictation was used when they were in the second grade. The data were analyzed with Pearson’s correlation test, linear regression analysis, and ANOVA, with a p-value ≤ 0.05. Results: the results provide evidence that agrees with other studies in that children with signs of risk of dyslexia differ from children with typical development in terms of less phonological skills and that these differences are already present at the beginning of the literacy process. Conclusion: the early screening allows for the identification of the risk factors for dyslexia, making it possible to implement preventive and personalized phonological skills training to make the literacy process easier.