Developmental dyslexics and unimpaired children’s reading and memory for words in a transparent orthography

Natasza Dominika Nalesnik,Bahman Baluch

doi:10.5964/ejop.v6i1.171

Natasza Dominika Nalesnik, Bahman Baluch

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v6i1.171

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Abstract

Word reading and short-term memory performance of forty two developmental dyslexics (mean age 10.1 years, SD = .7) and thirty three unimpaired reading age matched (mean age of 8.5, SD = .5) and thirty six unimpaired chronological age matched children (mean age of 10.6, SD = .7) was investigated in transparent Polish orthography. Fifty of the children were instructed that they were expected to recall the list of (12 high frequency mainly concrete) words after reading them aloud (Condition A), whilst others had no such instructions (Condition B). Word reading was tested by recording the time taken to read aloud the list of words in seconds and by taking into account errors in pronunciation. Overall, word reading was significantly slower for developmental dyslexics compared to reading age (RA) and chronological age (CA) controls. However, developmental dyslexics’ recall of words was comparable to CA and significantly superior to RA both in conditions A and B of the experiment. The implications of these results in relation to the impact of spelling transparency on memory performance of impaired and unimpaired readers are discussed.

Highlights

There has been considerable research examining the significance of phonological processing in the development of reading and spelling (e.g., Ehri, 1999; Frith, 1980) developmental dyslexia (e.g., Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Snowling, 1980; Swan & Goswami, 1997) and memory processes (e.g., Baddeley, 1986; Baddeley, 1990)
The results showed that similar to studies on scripts with a mixture of opaque and transparent spellings such as Persian, dyslexics are significantly slower than the two unimpaired groups in the time taken to read words
This result suggests that reading in an entirely transparent script per se is not a significant factor affecting the magnitude of differences between dyslexics and the two unimpaired controls as compared to scripts with a more opaque relationship

Summary

Introduction

There has been considerable research examining the significance of phonological processing in the development of reading and spelling (e.g., Ehri, 1999; Frith, 1980) developmental dyslexia (e.g., Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Snowling, 1980; Swan & Goswami, 1997) and memory processes (e.g., Baddeley, 1986; Baddeley, 1990). Europe’s Journal of Psychology the manner in which a particular orthography represents phonology of the spoken language has its unique effect on the development of reading and spelling (Rack, Hulme, Snowling & Wightman, 1994), developmental dyslexia (Goulandris, 2003) and memory processes (Baluch & Danaye-Tousie, 2006a). There has been little systematic research on the development of reading and spelling in Polish, and none has been reported on short-term memory for dyslexics and unimpaired readers

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