Abstract
Children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) are impaired in Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) tasks, where subjects are asked to name arrays of high frequency items as quickly as possible. However the reasons why RAN speed discriminates DD from typical readers are not yet fully understood. Our study was aimed to identify some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying RAN-reading relationship by comparing one group of 32 children with DD with an age-matched control group of typical readers on a naming and a visual recognition task both using a discrete-trial methodology, in addition to a serial RAN task, all using the same stimuli (digits and colors). Results showed a significant slowness of DD children in both serial and discrete-trial naming (DN) tasks regardless of type of stimulus, but no difference between the two groups on the discrete-trial recognition task. Significant differences between DD and control participants in the RAN task disappeared when performance in the DN task was partialled out by covariance analysis for colors, but not for digits. The same pattern held in a subgroup of DD subjects with a history of early language delay (LD). By contrast, in a subsample of DD children without LD the RAN deficit was specific for digits and disappeared after slowness in DN was partialled out. Slowness in DN was more evident for LD than for noLD DD children. Overall, our results confirm previous evidence indicating a name-retrieval deficit as a cognitive impairment underlying RAN slowness in DD children. This deficit seems to be more marked in DD children with previous LD. Moreover, additional cognitive deficits specifically associated with serial RAN tasks have to be taken into account when explaining deficient RAN speed of these latter children. We suggest that partially different cognitive dysfunctions underpin superficially similar RAN impairments in different subgroups of DD subjects.
Highlights
One of the most robust research findings on the cognitive bases of developmental reading disorders is a deficit of children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) on rapid serial naming tasks
ANOVA on Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) times revealed a significant group effect, for both digits (F(1,62) = 27.95, p < 0.001) and colors (F(1,62) = 8.96, p < 0.01): DD children were significantly slower than controls in both RAN of digits and colors
Significant differences between the groups were evident on the discrete-trial naming (DN) response latencies, regardless of type of stimulus: mean response latencies in DN tasks were higher in language delay (LD)-DD children than in typically developing readers for both digits (F(1,34) = 34.60, p < 0.001) and colors (F(1,34) = 18.32, p < 0.001)
Summary
One of the most robust research findings on the cognitive bases of developmental reading disorders ( known as Developmental Dyslexia, DD) is a deficit of children with DD on rapid serial naming tasks (for reviews see Wolf and Bowers, 1999 and Kirby et al, 2010). Since early Englishbased research in the 1970s and 1980s, a strong relation between RAN speed measures and reading acquisition has been documented in a wide array of languages, with both inconsistent (e.g., French: Plaza and Cohen, 2003) and consistent (e.g., German: Wimmer, 1993; Dutch: de Jong and van der Leij, 1999; Finnish: Holopainen et al, 2001; Italian: Di Filippo et al, 2005) alphabetic orthographies. Despite this evidence, we are currently some way from obtaining a complete understanding of the reasons why RAN performance is related to reading
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