Early Reading Problems: A Follow Up 20 Years Later

Abstract

Over the past two decades it has been increasingly accepted that dyslexia (or specific reading disability) is basically a verbal processing problem and more specifically a problem related to phonological aspects of language processing. A diversity of phonological deficits are found to both correlate with reading development and to be a distinctive feature of dyslexia. The most salient phonological processing measures invoke phonological awareness, phonological coding in verbal short term memory, naming speed, speech perception and speech production (See Brady & Shankweiler, 1991). There is no general agreement about the theoretical relationship between various measures of phonological processing (Elbro, 1996; Rack, 1994). Nevertheless the empirical results are quite impressive when it comes to the prediction of dyslexia. Most of the results are based on research on children and there are very few studies on phonological processing in adults with dyslexia. The present research investigated various aspects of honological processing abilities in a sample of adults with a history of dyslexia. The sample was identified on the basis of their reading problems in the early school years, 20 years ago. Individuals in this sample were recently relocated and given a questionnaire and a battery of tests. This chapter reports on the results of this examination.