dyslexia

• English is inconsistent: bead, tread, great.... many letters/letter combinations have > 1 pronunciation, there are ~44 phonemes, but only 26 letters
• The relationship between consistency and reading ability: consistent languages like Finnish, Greek, Italian, Spanish have higher reading accuracy scores compared to inconsistent languages like Scottish English
• Two main strategies for how children learn to read

  • Visual (visually-based whole word recognition)
  • Phonological (phonological recoding - letters to sounds)
• Visually-based whole word recognition requires attention to visually salient cues. Preschoolers could 'read' some signs, but not by using letters.
• Masonheimer, Drum, and Ehri (1984)
• Although the preschoolers knew 62% of their letter-sounds, they didn't use them to read
• Visually-based whole word recognition is a short-lived strategy - it does not work for reading novel words
• Phonological recoding (letters to sounds)


  • Requires attention to individual/groups of letters and making links between letters and sounds
  • Error analysis shows beginning readers make phonologically correct errors for words, and can read pseudowords quite well
• Phonological awareness (PA)


  Knowledge that words are made up from separable units of sound, at the levels of syllables, onset/rime, and phonemes
• How phonological awareness is measured


  1. Rhyme recognition

  2. Phoneme deletion
• Phonological awareness skills have enduring ability to predict later reading ability and inability
• Some suggestion of learning through subtitles, with recent UK project funded by the Nuffield Foundation to properly test this idea
• Stage theories of reading development

  • Frith (1985): Logographic, Alphabetic, Orthographic
  • Ehri (1995): Pre-alphabetic, Partial-alphabetic, Full alphabetic, Consolidated alphabetic
  • Ziegler & Goswami (2005): Syllables, Onset-rime, Nucleus-coda, Phoneme
• Ehri's Phase Model


  • Pre-Alphabetic: connections between visual features and pronunciation/semantic representation, lack phonemic awareness
  • Partial Alphabetic: form partial alphabetic connections between sound and print, often first/last consonants
  • Full Alphabetic: full knowledge of letter-sound correspondences, can read previously unseen words
  • Consolidated Alphabetic: similar to orthographic stage, recurring letter patterns become unitised
• Why do some children find reading and writing difficult? Both Frith and Ehri argue that they become stuck at the alphabetic stage
• Phonetic cues


  • The better the phonetic cue, the easier it is to learn pronunciations
• Partial letter-sound knowledge


  • May read 'join' as 'john'
  • Can remember taught words easier than in previous phase
  • May confuse similar letters (e.g., 'b' and 'd')
  • May confuse similarly spelled words
• Full Alphabetic phase


  Full knowledge of letter-sound correspondences (grapho-phonemic knowledge), spellings 'bonded' via this knowledge to pronunciations in memory
• Full Alphabetic phase


  • k n o c k
  • /n/ /o/ /k/
• Full Alphabetic phase


  • No longer confused by similarly spelled words
  • Can read previously unseen words
  • Sight vocabulary steadily increases
  • Can spell short regular words
  • May still struggle with multi-syllabic words
• Consolidated Alphabetic phase


  Similar to orthographic stage of Frith, recurring letter patterns (-tion as in action) become unitised or consolidated, reducing memory load
• Consolidated Alphabetic phase


  • Words containing more familiar letter patterns are read more accurately
  • Can decode multisyllabic words by 'chunking'
  • Remembers spellings of words
• Learning and applying letter sound correspondences is a challenge
• Learning letter-sound correspondences requires phonological awareness (PA)
• If PA or phonological processing is poor, letter-sound knowledge (LSK) will be impaired at alphabetic stages
• PA plays an important role in learning to read
• PA reliably predicts reading across languages and educational practices
• Good PA -> good readers
• Evidence of poor PA in children with dyslexia
• PA tasks


  • Rhyming odd man out (lot cot hat pot – odd one out?)
  • Poor representations
• Poor PA is one of the principal deficits in dyslexia
• Developmental dyslexia


  A specific learning difficulty (SpLD) that affects the ability of the individual to learn to read and write
• Developmental dyslexia doesn't mean the person will be illiterate
• Developmental dyslexia doesn't mean they are 'stupid' or 'slow' or 'lazy'
• Developmental dyslexia doesn't mean they are clever or middle class!
• Developmental dyslexia means they may have other types of cognitive difficulty that can affect areas of their life other than reading and writing
• Difficulties experienced by Simon as a child

  • Slow to learn left from right
  • Easily confused by verbal instructions
  • Easily disorientated when out and about
  • Capable but slow at school
  • Hated reading and reading aloud
  • Initial attempts at writing were problematic - wrote letters and words back to front
  • Poor handwriting and slow writing
  • Couldn't keep up with copying from the board
  • Punished for shortcomings by teachers
• Assessing dyslexia by discrepancy

  Discrepancy between perceived potential to learn to read (usually IQ) and actual level of reading achievement
• IQ only weakly correlated with reading, so predicted potential is insensitive at best
• Discrepancy approach does not differentiate how well they respond to intervention - both groups respond well