Abstract
Poor spellers in normal schools, who were not poor readers, were studied for handedness, visuospatial and other cognitive abilities in order to explore contrasts between poor spellers with and without good phonology. It was predicted by the right shift (RS) theory of handedness and cerebral dominance that those with good phonology would have strong bias to dextrality and relative weakness of the right hemisphere, while those without good phonology would have reduced bias to dextrality and relative weakness of the left hemisphere. Poor spellers with good phonetic equivalent spelling errors (GFEs) included fewer left-handers (2.4%) than poor spellers without GFEs (24.4%). Differences for hand skill were as predicted. Tests of visuospatial processing found no differences between the groups in levels of ability, but there was a marked difference in pattern of correlations between visuospatial test scores and homophonic word discrimination. Whereas good spellers (GS) and poor spellers without GFEs showed positive correlations between word discrimination and visuospatial ability, there were no significant correlations for poor spellers with GFEs. The differences for handedness and possibly for the utilisation of visuospatial skills suggest that surface dyslexics differ from phonological dyslexics in cerebral specialisation and perhaps in the quality of inter-hemispheric relations.
Highlights
Poor spelling, or dysgraphia, is part of a spectrum of literacy problems that can be considered under a general heading of ‘dyslexia’, poor literacy that cannot be ascribed to low intelligence or lack of opportunities to learn
The present research contributes to the evidence for a biologically based difference between phonological and surface dyslexics by showing that poor spellers with GFE errors differ from poor spellers without such errors for both handedness and the possible utilisation of visuospatial abilities
The findings for handedness in GFE groups supported the hypothesis that poor spellers differ according to the presence or absence of poor phonology
Summary
Dysgraphia, is part of a spectrum of literacy problems that can be considered under a general heading of ‘dyslexia’, poor literacy that cannot be ascribed to low intelligence or lack of opportunities to learn. The idea that an inherited factor might promote left hemisphere speech and incidentally bias handedness to the right suggested that if some individuals lacked this factor (RS - - genotypes) an explanation would be offered for Orton’s (1925, 1937) observation that children with developmental language problems include many not strongly biased to the right hand. This hypothesis was followed up and supported in several studies (reviewed in Annett, 2002; Smythe, 2002). If this distinction maps onto the distinction between phonological and surface dyslexics, it would be consistent with the
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