Abstract
Studies of group differences have established that the phonological profiles of people with reading difficulties contain both strengths and weaknesses. The current study extends this work by exploring individual differences in phonological ability using a multiple case study approach. A heterogeneous sample of 56 children (M age = 9 years) with reading difficulties completed a battery of tasks measuring literacy, phonological processing, expressive vocabulary and general ability. The phonological tasks included measures of phonological awareness (PA), phonological memory (PM), and rapid naming (RAN). A majority-although not all-of the children had phonological processing impairments. However, there was also substantial variability in the nature of children's phonological difficulties. While multiple impairments encompassing two or more phonological domains were most common, impairments that were specific to PA, PM or RAN also occurred frequently. Even within the domain of PA, where children completed three well-matched tasks, individual children were rarely impaired across all three measures and a number of different profiles were observed. Additional, group-level analyses indicated that PA was a significant predictor of decoding while RAN was a significant predictor of automatic word recognition and comprehension. Findings are discussed with reference to conceptual models of phonological processing and implications for assessment.
Highlights
Background and literacy measuresThe Wide Range Intelligence Test (WRIT: Glutting, Adams, & Sheslow, 2000) was administered to assess both verbal and non-verbal IQ
The analyses suggest that a small proportion of children in the sample showed no evidence of any phonological deficits
Adopting the multiple case study approach has underlined the probabilistic nature of the relationship between phonology and reading and emphasised that the precise nature of the phonological deficit may vary from person to person
Summary
Background and literacy measuresThe Wide Range Intelligence Test (WRIT: Glutting, Adams, & Sheslow, 2000) was administered to assess both verbal and non-verbal IQ. Mean scores for both measures were within the average range but the children were heterogeneous in terms of their general ability. The YARC has been standardised on a sample of participants aged between 4.0 and 12.4 years and generally has good levels of reliability (Cronbach's α = .75, .90 and .64 for reading accuracy, rate, and comprehension respectively). Two of the children were beyond the upper age limit for the YARC and completed the Gray Oral Reading Tests, 5th Edition (GORT-5: Bryant & Wiederholt, 2011) as an alternative These children were excluded from group-level analyses involving the YARC to avoid complications associated with aggregating data from different assessments.
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