Investigating the interactions between mental, linguistic, and metalinguistic skills in Greek students with developmental dyslexia: A pilot study

The present study examined whether an improvement in English as a second language causes an improvement among poor readers in Hebrew as the first language. This assumption is named in the present study “The Cognitive-Retroactive Transfer (CRT) hypothesis of linguistic skills”. The participants were 20 sixth-grade poor readers from Israeli elementary schools, with Hebrew as their first language, and who learn English as their second language. All the students in the program participated in small group instruction sessions that emphasized linguistic and meta-linguistic skills in the second language (English). The program, which was administered over a 5-month period, involved approximately 40 hours of contact with a trained instructor. The participants were administered various tests which measured their basic linguistic skills in English as well as in Hebrew. The tests were as follows: phonological awareness, phonological processing, word identification, reading fluency, reading comprehension, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, orthographic knowledge and spelling. The tests in both languages were given to the participants before and after the intervention program. The test results indicated significant differences both in English and in Hebrew before and after the intervention program for all linguistic skills (except orthographic knowledge). The findings provide scientific support for the Cognitive-Retroactive Transfer (CRT) hypothesis, which means that an improvement in linguistic and meta-linguistic skills in a second language will be expected to give rise to a similar improvement in the first language as well. The results are discussed in light of the findings in the literature as well as suggestions for future research.

All Arabic-speaking children grow up in diglossia. They use a Spoken Arabic (SpA) variety for everyday speech but Modern Standard Arabic (StA), a linguistically distant variety, for all literacy-related spheres of use including reading and writing. Given this sociofunctional complementarity, children are continuously required to shift between the spoken and standard varieties. The study tested the contribution of executive functions (EFs) and of linguistic and metalinguistic skills in SpA and StA to listening comprehension (LC) in StA among kindergarten children. A total of 775 Palestinian Arabic-speaking children were tested on LC and sentence processing in StA, on EFs (inhibition, switching, memory), and on parallel linguistic (vocabulary and lexico-phonological representations) and metalinguistic (phonological and morphological awareness) skills in SpA and in StA independently. Structural equation modeling showed that all three EF skills were indirectly related to LC via linguistic and metalinguistic skills in SpA and StA, yet working memory showed a direct contribution as well. With respect to linguistic and metalinguistic skills, the results showed that these were interrelated across the two language varieties. Moreover, SpA skills were related to LC indirectly, via their corresponding skills in the StA, yet importantly also directly. The study demonstrates the centrality of EFs in LC in StA. Furthermore, they underscore the interdependence of linguistic and metalinguistic skills in SpA and StA as well as the direct and indirect contribution of language and metalinguistic skills in the spoken variety to comprehension in StA. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.30676223.

**Abstract:** Developmental Dyslexia (DD) is a heterogeneous disorder that affects reading accuracy and speed to different extents. Different decoding errors can depend on impairments to different components of the dual-route model of reading, thus resulting in different types of DD (Friedmann & Coltheart 2018) even in a shallow-orthography language like Italian (Traficante et al. 2017). Moreover, there is evidence of the effect of morphological information on reading fluency (Burani 2010) and accuracy (Angelelli et al. 2014) of Italian subjects. The present study explores the influence of different measures of decoding accuracy and morphosyntactic competence on the reading of Italian children with and without DD. Forty-two Italian children from the 2nd to the 5th grade of primary school [(14 with a diagnose of general DD and 28 with Typical Development (TD)] were tested on standard measures of reading (Cornoldi & Colpo 2011) and syntactic comprehension (Bisiacchi et al. 2005). A non-standardized test (Arosio et al. 2014) for the syntactic production of 3rd-person direct object clitic pronouns was also administered, and a decoding error analysis based on an adaptation of the coding scheme by Friedmann & Coltheart (2018) was performed. Generalized linear mixed models were analyzed, with the double level of group (DD and TD), syntactic comprehension, and syntactic production as fixed effects, and age and 11 types of reading errors as random effects. The outcomes show that (morpho)syntactic comprehension and production significantly predict reading accuracy. Moreover, negative predictive effects of morphological, semantic, and phonological-output-buffer decoding errors on reading accuracy emerged, thus showing that reading accuracy is significantly affected by morphosyntactic competence and by some decoding errors that have to do with morphology to different extents. Reading speed appeared to be a specific problem of DD children and was significantly affected by the decoding of complex multi-letter compounds. Reading comprehension was not affected by any particular error category but was predicted by standard measures of decoding accuracy and speed, with a stronger effect of the latter. A positive predictive effect of age on written comprehension but not on written decoding was probably due to the acquisition of cognitive strategies and general knowledge, which strengthen children’s contextualization and expectation skills. DD children showed a specific difficulty in decoding longer and morphologically complex words. The significant co-occurrence of some error types suggests the presence of diverse comorbidity profiles among different types of DD. A weak positive effect of age, matched with a negative effect of syntactic comprehension, on errors in decoding complex multi-letter compounds might be evidence of the use of the lexical route of reading as children’s age increases, even by resorting to inadequate compensation strategies. To conclude, morphosyntactic skills predict reading accuracy in children with and without DD. (Morpho)syntactic comprehension is particularly related to the recognition of complex multi-letter compounds, which, in turn, affects reading speed. This suggests that oral morphosyntactic training might help reading accuracy and, indirectly, reading speed. This might be particularly useful for DD children, whose reading speed, as well as accuracy in decoding longer morphologically complex words, was specifically impaired. At the same time, a fine-grained analysis of decoding errors made by DD children might help the assessment of impairments to specific sections of the reading model, thus allowing for ad hoc intervention programs.

This research examined differences between dyslexic, poor and normal readers who learn in the same educational framework, across various linguistic and meta-linguistic skills in Hebrew as the first language (L1) and English as a foreign language (FL), following an intervention program focusing on English linguistic skills. The participants included 124 sixth graders divided into an experimental and a control group, where each group was divided into dyslexic, poor and normal readers. The experimental group participated in an intervention program in English, constructed to the requirements of this research, in addition to the regular sixth-grade English curriculum. All participants were administered a battery of tests in English and Hebrew: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, orthography, decoding, word recognition, reading fluency, dictation, spelling and reading comprehension before and after the intervention program. More significant differences in most linguistic and meta-linguistic skills improvement in English and in Hebrew were found in the experimental group compared to the control group, with the most significant improvement exhibited by the dyslexic readers. The findings indicate the contribution of the intervention program in English for improving linguistic and meta-linguistic skills in both languages among all readers, and especially among dyslexic readers. Enlargement of the curriculum in English appears to expand their potential, and their improvement is better than that of the poor and normal readers.

Linguistic and non-linguistic prosodic skills in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia

Developmental Dyslexia (DD) is a condition in which reading accuracy and/or fluency falls substantially below what is expected based on the individuals age, general level of cognitive ability, and educational opportunities. The procedural circuit deficit hypothesis (PDH) proposes that DD may be largely explained in terms of alterations of the cortico‐basal ganglia procedural memory system (in particular of the striatum) whereas the (hippocampus‐dependent) declarative memory system is intact, and may serve a compensatory role in the condition. The present study was designed to test this hypothesis. Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging, we examined the functional and structural brain correlates of sequence‐specific procedural learning (SL) on the serial reaction time task, in 17 children with DD and 18 typically developing (TD) children. The study was performed over 2 days with a 24‐h interval between sessions. In line with the PDH, the DD group showed less activation of the striatum during the processing of sequential statistical regularities. These alterations predicted the amount of SL at day 2, which in turn explained variance in children's reading fluency. Additionally, reduced hippocampal activation predicted larger SL gains between day 1 and day 2 in the TD group, but not in the DD group. At the structural level, caudate nucleus volume predicted the amount of acquired SL at day 2 in the TD group, but not in the DD group. The findings encourage further research into factors that promote learning in children with DD, including through compensatory mechanisms.

Failure of resting-state frontal–occipital connectivity in linking visual perception with reading fluency in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

Objectives: This study aimed to compare the phonological processing abilities of four groups of early elementary school children: typically developing (TD) children, children with speech sound disorders (SSD only), children with speech sound disorders and co-occurring developmental dyslexia (SSD+DD), and children with developmental dyslexia (DD).Methods: The participants included 14 TD children, 4 children with SSD only, 10 children with SSD+DD, and 13 children with DD in the first to third grades. Phonological awareness was assessed at the syllable and phoneme levels. To examine phonological memory ability, nonword repetition, sentence repetition, and picture-pointing tasks were conducted. Rapid automatized naming was assessed using number and letter stimuli.Results: Significant differences were observed among the groups in all phonological processing subcomponent tasks. No significant differences were found among the TD, SSD only, and DD groups. Additionally, the TD and SSD only groups demonstrated similar performance. The SSD+DD group exhibited significantly lower performance across all tasks, indicating severe deficits in phonological processing.Conclusion: This study demonstrated that school-age children with SSD+DD show distinct vulnerabilities in phonological processing skills compared to children with SSD only or DD. Although establishing a clear causal relationship between deficits in phonological processing skills, speech production, and reading problems is challenging, this study suggests a complex interplay between these issues.

Studies of ASD children have mainly focused on pragmatics, but research showed they have problems in other language dimensions. The present systematic review aims to analyze the literature related to linguistic and metalinguistic studies to determine linguistic characteristics and their correlation with reading and writing. After reviewing 43 articles founded, the studies were divided into four main categories: descriptive, comparative, linguistic, and finally nonlinguistic interventional studies. 42% of studies are descriptive, 14% were comparative, and 5% were about the effect of linguistic and metalinguistic training on reading and writing. Studies on the effect of other training on linguistic and metalinguistic skills were about 39% of the studies. They have deficiencies in different linguistic and metalinguistic skills, especially grammar. There were no studies investigating the relationship between linguistic and metalinguistic abilities. The relationship between language and reading skills has been neglected and only one study has examined the correlation between phonological awareness and reading skills. Thus, there is a serious gap in metalinguistic studies. However, it is necessary to study these relationships due to the change in the reading education system from a phonological to a lexical path in schools. The effect of nonlinguistic interventions has been studied more than linguistic ones.

Some types of developmental dyslexia (DD) are associated with morphology. Deep DD leads to morphological and semantic errors, and possible comorbidity with syntactic deficits; phonological-output-buffer DD causes problems in decoding longer morphologically complex words. In addition, cross-linguistic studies highlight the effects of morphological awareness on reading accuracy and fluency. The role of morphosyntactic abilities on reading is, however, not clear. This study explores the influence of morphosyntactic competence on reading in Italian children with and without DD. A total of 14 children with DD and 28 with Typical Development (TD) attending the Italian primary school were tested on written decoding, syntactic comprehension of different grammatical structures, and syntactic production of direct object clitic pronouns. DD children were significantly less accurate and slower in reading than TD children. Syntactic skills of the two groups did not differ significantly, but some differences in their acquisitional pace emerged. Syntactic comprehension and production of direct-object-clitic pronouns predicted reading accuracy standard scores, thus suggesting that morphosyntactic abilities, beyond clitics’ weak phonological status, affect decoding accuracy. Decoding accuracy was influenced by reading errors related to morphology (morphological, semantic, and phonological-output-buffer errors). Decoding speed was a specific weakness of DD children and was rather affected by multi-letter combinations. Consistent with a dual-route approach to orthographic processing, we argue that accuracy depends on fine-grained decoding strategies maximizing the precise ordering of letters, thus it is more sensitive to morphosyntactic skills. Morphological reading errors were associated with phonologically weak (determiners, clitic pronouns, and prepositions) and salient words (verbs). This suggests that the decoding of function words and morphologically complex words is particularly demanding and related to both phonological and morphosyntactic skills. Age had a negative predictive effect on semantic errors, compatible with the gradual acquisition of lexical decoding strategies, which seemed to be slowed down by DD. We conclude that oral morphosyntactic skills play a role in reading accuracy in the Italian shallow orthography for both DD and TD children. It is then advisable to assess children’s linguistic profile during DD diagnoses to establish whether some reading errors are related to morphosyntactic weakness. In this case, ad hoc morphosyntactic training might support reading accuracy.

Developmental dyslexia (DD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are two of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders among school-age children. These disorders frequently co-occur, with up to 40–50% of children with one diagnosis meeting criteria for the other, and similar percentages of children with either DD or ADHD exhibiting impaired executive functions (EF). Although both ADHD and EF deficits are common in dyslexia, there is little evidence about how ADHD and EF deficits specifically influence the brain basis of reading difficulty in dyslexia, and whether the influences of ADHD and EF on dyslexia can be disentangled. The goal of the current study was to investigate, at both behavioral and brain levels, whether reading performance in individuals with dyslexia is more strongly associated with EF or with diagnostic status of comorbid ADHD. We examined reading abilities and EF in children (8-13 years old) with typical reading ability, DD only, or both DD + ADHD. Across both groups with dyslexia, impaired EF was associated with greater impairment on measures loading onto a reading fluency, but not a reading accuracy, factor. There were no significant differences between the DD and DD + ADHD groups on measures of reading fluency or reading accuracy. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a rhyme-matching reading task requiring phonological awareness, typically developing readers showed greater left-hemisphere reading network activation than children with DD or DD + ADHD. Children with DD and DD + ADHD did not show differential activation, but DD children with unimpaired EF showed greater activation than those with impaired EF in reading-related areas. Thus, ADHD status alone had no measurable influence on reading performance or brain activation. Impaired EF in dyslexia, independent of ADHD status, was associated with greater deficits in reading fluency and greater reductions of activation in response to print in the typical left-hemisphere reading network.

Early cognitive profiles predicting reading and arithmetic skills in grades 1 and 7

Dyslexia (or developmental dyslexia or specific reading disability) is a specific learning disorder that has a neurobiological origin. It is marked by difficulties with accurate or fluent recognition of words and poor spelling in people who have average or above average intelligence and these difficulties cannot be attributed to another cause, for example, poor vision, hearing difficulty, or lack of socio-environmental opportunities, motivation, or adequate instruction. Studies have correlated reading skills with musical abilities. It has been hypothesized that musical training may be able to remediate timing difficulties, improve pitch perception, or increase spatial awareness, thereby having a positive effect on skills needed in the development of language and literacy. To study the effectiveness of music education on reading skills (that is, oral reading skills, reading comprehension, reading fluency, phonological awareness, and spelling) in children and adolescents with dyslexia. We searched the following electronic databases in June 2012: CENTRAL (2012, Issue 5), MEDLINE (1948 to May Week 4 2012 ), EMBASE (1980 to 2012 Week 22), CINAHL (searched 7 June 2012), LILACS (searched 7 June 2012), PsycINFO (1887 to May Week 5 2012), ERIC (searched 7 June 2012), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (1970 to 6 June 2012), Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Social Sciences and Humanities (1990 to 6 June 2012), and WorldCat (searched 7 June 2012). We also searched the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) and reference lists of studies. We did not apply any date or language limits. We planned to include randomized controlled trials. We looked for studies that included at least one of our primary outcomes. The primary outcomes were related to the main domain of the reading: oral reading skills, reading comprehension, reading fluency, phonological awareness, and spelling, measured through validated instruments. The secondary outcomes were self esteem and academic achievement. Two authors (HCM and RBA) independently screened all titles and abstracts identified through the search strategy to determine their eligibility. For our analysis we had planned to use mean difference for continuous data, with 95% confidence intervals, and to use the random-effects statistical model when the effect estimates of two or more studies could be combined in a meta-analysis. We retrieved 851 references via the search strategy. No randomized controlled trials testing music education for the improvement of reading skills in children with dyslexia could be included in this review. There is no evidence available from randomized controlled trials on which to base a judgment about the effectiveness of music education for the improvement of reading skills in children and adolescents with dyslexia. This uncertainty warrants further research via randomized controlled trials, involving a interdisciplinary team: musicians, hearing and speech therapists, psychologists, and physicians.

The aim of the study was to examine the role of phonological processing in people with and without dyslexia, who should have already mastered the skill of reading. We tested 98 high school students aged 16–18 years, including 49 with dyslexia and 49 without. The results indicate that the participants with dyslexia, as compared with participants without dyslexia, read single words and pseudowords less correctly and slower, which is consistent with literature on the subject. In addition, they scored significantly poorer in the phoneme blending, rapid automatic naming, and backward digit span task. In the criterion group, the relationship between phonological awareness and reading fluency was much stronger, and between rapid automatic naming and reading fluency slightly weaker than in the control group. This indicates a greater influence of long-term memory on reading in high school students without dyslexia.

Previous research has highlighted the influence of visual search (VS) on reading comprehension (RC); however, the underlying mechanisms of this effect remain poorly understood, particularly in children with reading disabilities. This study explores disparities in VS, word detection skills (WD), reading fluency (RF), and RC between Chinese children with developmental dyslexia (DD) and their typically developing peers across different age groups. The sample comprised 191 students from grades 2, 4, and 6, including 92 children with dyslexia and 99 chronological age-matched controls. Variance analysis was used to examine differences in VS, WD, RF, and RC performance. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to assess the relationships among these variables. Children with DD performed significantly worse than their typically developing peers on VS and RC tasks, with the most notable differences emerging in the middle and higher grades. Additionally, children with DD showed weaker WD skills and RF, with these disparities evident across all grade levels. SEM indicated that VS directly influences RC, with WD and RF serving as mediators in the relationship between VS and RC. These findings elucidate the complex interplay between visual processing and linguistic skills in reading development, particularly within the Chinese language context. The study underscores the importance of targeted interventions for children with dyslexia, emphasizing strategies that address the unique challenges these learners face in Chinese reading environments.