Annals of Dyslexia最新文献

This study aimed to examine the mental health and social-emotional skills of individuals with mathematics difficulties (MD), reading difficulties (RD), and comorbid difficulties (MDRD) in China. Students with MD (n = 35), RD (n = 27), MDRD (n = 43), and typically-developing peers (TD, n = 167) completed the Children's Depression Inventory, the Children's Loneliness Questionnaire, the Social Anxiety Questionnaire, and the Survey on Social Emotional Skills (SSES). In regard to mental health, results showed that MDRD experienced significantly higher levels of loneliness compared to TD, while MD had significantly higher levels of depression than TD. No significant differences were found in mental health outcomes between the MD, RD, and MDRD groups. In regard to social-emotional skills, the results showed that MD had significantly lower levels of persistence, responsibility, self-control, emotional control, curiosity, and energy compared to TD. MDRD also showed significantly lower curiosity compared to TD. There were no significant differences in task performance, emotional regulation, collaboration, and open-mindedness among the MD, RD, and MDRD groups. These findings suggest that different learning difficulties are associated with distinct profiles of mental health and social-emotional skills.

A descriptive cross-sectional study was undertaken with Sinhala speaking students from grades 1 and 2 in the Gampaha District of Sri Lanka to determine how akshara graphical features influence emerging reading skills. A battery of locally validated assessments evaluated akshara knowledge (recognition and production), word reading (accurate and fluent), accurate sentence reading and visual perceptual skills. The study examined the graphic complexity of akshara by examining the number of disconnected components (DC), connected points (CP) and simple features (SF). This preliminary study explored how graphic complexity measures and visual perceptual skills correlated with akshara knowledge and how visual perceptual skills and akshara knowledge independently correlated with word and sentence reading abilities. Students from 27 schools participated. Out of the total 4847 students, 2447 (50.5%) were females and 2400 (49.5%) were from grade 1. Results demonstrated that 21 (0.43%) of students could neither recognise nor produce a single akshara, whilst 640 (13.2%) students could not recognise a single akshara with diacritics. It was the graphic complexity of the base akshara in addition to the diacritics added to it and the akshara production with long vowel sounds what students found most challenging. The study found that akshara without diacritic recognition and production was significantly associated with the number of CP and SF and visual perceptual skills, matching and sequencing significantly correlated with akshara with and without diacritic recognition and production for students in both grades. Furthermore, akshara with and without diacritics recognition and production together with visual perceptual skills matching and sequencing independently correlated with accurate word reading, fluent word reading and sentence reading abilities in binary logistic regression analysis. The important implication of this preliminary study is that it urges the field of early educators to consider the role of visual perceptual skills on early akshara learning when teaching akshara to beginner learners, whilst it is essential to further explore factors contributing towards akshara with diacritic knowledge in beginner Sinhala readers.

The current study sought to examine the existence of reading subtypes based on specific accuracy and rate criteria in dyslexia among a non-clinical sample of 120 Arabic-speaking University students and to characterize their reading-related and linguistic skills. For this aim, we relied on a conventional practice in reading disability literature based on a 25th percentile low achievement cut-offs. All students were examined using a battery of reading, linguistic, and cognitive tasks. The analysis conducted here provided partial support for the validity of the subtyping approach based on the accuracy and rate achievements and showed that ~ 12.5% of the sample could be defined as low accuracy (LA), ~ 10.8% as low rate (LR), and ~ 10.8% as a combined doubly low subtype (DL). The results showed that the combined DL group exhibited the lowest scores in all reading-related and linguistic tasks. Also, specific response patterns were found for LA and LR subtypes in reading-related pseudowords' decoding and phonological awareness measures. These findings, the first to provide insights into the question of adult dyslexia through analysis of reading subtypes among Arabic-speaking students, are discussed in relation to previous findings in the literature among speakers of other languages. The data presented here provide new support for the adequacy of the accuracy vs. rate model of dyslexia among adults and stress the need for developing different interventions for the different reading subtypes.

In this study, we examined to what extent orthographic skills, phonological processing, oral vocabulary, and word memory accounted for variance in reading comprehension among upper-elementary school children with and without dyslexia. The tasks came from the Tests of Dyslexia (TOD). Data from 753 participants (typically developing n = 575; children with dyslexia n = 143) ages 8 to 11 were analyzed with t-tests and multiple regression models. Performance of typically developing children was significantly higher than children with dyslexia on all tasks (p < .001). Typically developing children exhibited age-related improvements, though this association was absent in children with dyslexia. Among typically developing children, orthographic mapping, phonological awareness, oral vocabulary, and working memory scores uniquely explained reading comprehension. Among children with dyslexia, only orthographic mapping and oral vocabulary scores uniquely predicted reading comprehension. Our findings highlight the strong effects of orthographic mapping on reading comprehension observed across both groups. Limitations and educational implications are discussed.

Recent research suggests that performance on Statistical Learning (SL) tasks may be lower in children with dyslexia in deep orthographies such as English. However, it is debated whether the observed difficulties may vary depending on the modality and stimulus of the task, opening a broad discussion about whether SL is a domain-general or domain-specific construct. Besides, little is known about SL in children with dyslexia who learn transparent orthographies, where the transparency of grapheme-phoneme correspondences might reduce the reliance on implicit learning processes. The present study investigates the impact of SL in Spanish, a transparent orthography, among 50 children aged 9 to 12 years, with and without dyslexia. For this purpose, we used four SL tasks to evaluate two modalities (auditory/visual) and two stimulus type (verbal/nonverbal) and evaluated both accuracy and response times on each condition. The findings reveal that children with dyslexia in Spanish exhibit lower performance on SL tasks (accuracy) compared to the control group, regardless of the modality and stimulus type used. However, children with dyslexia struggle the most with tasks that involve visual material. This indicates that children with dyslexia in transparent orthographies have particular difficulties in extracting distributional probabilistic information in the absence of explicit learning instructions. Notably, difficulties were more pronounced in visual tasks involving verbal stimuli. The present results help to better understand the underlying mechanisms involved in reading acquisition in children with dyslexia.

With a focus on content-area reading, this study aimed to (a) understand the sources and prevalence of concurrent and specific difficulties in word-level skills, vocabulary, and knowledge among adolescent struggling readers (ASRs) and (b) explore the relations among reading skills, profiles, and reading comprehension. A dual-measure screening approach was used to classify a sample of 492 seventh- and eighth-graders. Among the subgroup of 225 ASRs, five distinct profiles were identified by latent profile analysis. The results confirmed the following: (a) the heterogeneity of reading difficulties in adolescents; (b) the universal prevalence of vocabulary difficulties across various language systems; and (c) the finding that fluency, rather than word accuracy, presents a more significant challenge at the word level in ASRs. Additionally, academic vocabulary knowledge and content-area knowledge independently predict content-area reading comprehension, even after accounting for general reading comprehension. This implies that preventive and remedial efforts for adolescent reading difficulties should prioritize and tailor crucial components of content-area reading.

In the realm of logographic writing systems, such as Chinese characters, orthographic transparency fundamentally differs from alphabetic languages, posing unique challenges for individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD). This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) and a masked priming paradigm to investigate how Chinese children with DD compared to typically developing (TD) children in their utilization of orthographic-phonological mapping rules during the processing of pseudocharacters. The findings revealed noteworthy distinctions between TD and DD children. TD children exhibited a robust priming effect in radical priming, characterized by an enhanced N170 (100-200 ms) amplitude and a reduced P200 (200-350 ms) amplitude, whereas DD children did not display this differentiation. This observation parallels the difficulties faced by DD children in alphabetic languages. Furthermore, the study found a significant positive correlation between the N170 amplitude in the left posterior brain region of Chinese DD children and their orthographic performance: DD children with poorer orthographic awareness exhibited larger N170 amplitudes in this region. The present study sheds light on the challenges Chinese DD children encounter in processing regular sub-character routes, particularly evident in the early stages of orthographic processing. The orthographic deficits of DD children hinder their processing of Chinese orthography, resulting in increased cognitive demands.

Excessive crowding in the visual periphery has been demonstrated in children with developmental dyslexia (DD). However, less is known about crowding in the fovea, even though foveal crowding is at least equally important, as reading is mostly accomplished through foveal vision. Here we used a special set of digit stimuli (Pelli fonts) to measure foveal crowding in DD and DD + ADHD children, and compared it to that in TD (typically developing) and ADHD children. We also used the Chinese reading acuity charts (C-READ) to assess the maximum reading speed and reading acuity, along with tests to evaluate cognitive attributes including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness, and orthographic knowledge. The results indicate significantly stronger foveal crowding in the DD and DD + ADHD groups, as well as in the ADHD group, than in the TD group. Furthermore, the DD and DD + ADHD groups exhibited poorer maximum reading speed and reading acuity compared to the ADHD and TD groups. Within the two DD groups, the slower maximum reading speed and higher reading acuity can be predicted by stronger foveal crowding. In addition, the DD and DD + ADHD groups performed the worst in four cognitive skills, with the DD group showing negative correlations between foveal crowding and performances across all these skills. Our findings thus move beyond previously well-documented peripheral crowding in dyslexia, and the easy administration of the Pelli-font-based crowding test may be useful for early diagnosis of developmental dyslexia in young children.

While developmental dyslexia has been extensively studied in children, research on adults is still rather limited. This paper aims to bridge the gap in existing research by presenting the findings of a study that examined the reading and spelling skills of adults with dyslexia and assessed the effectiveness of a linguistic intervention designed to improve their literacy abilities. To address this issue, we first compared the profiles of 44 adults with dyslexia (age range: 16-30 y.o.) and 44 age-matched typical readers across tasks assessing reading, spelling, phonological awareness, morphological awareness and lexical access in Italian. The findings underscored pervasive impairments in dyslexia across all measured dimensions, reaffirming the persistent nature of language and literacy challenges into adulthood. In pursuit of the second objective, the study explored the potential for literacy skill improvement in adults with dyslexia through the implementation of a specialized intervention proposed to 24 dyslexic adults and delivered via a web application. The intervention program yielded positive outcomes in the experimental group, demonstrating significant improvements in word and text reading, spelling, and speed of phonological elaboration. This study, hence, contributes not only to our understanding of developmental dyslexia in adulthood but also emphasizes the tangible benefits of targeted linguistic interventions, thereby offering practical implications for the amelioration of literacy skills in this population.