Transparent Orthography Research Articles

Acquired surface dysgraphia and dyslexia in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia: a single-case study in Spanish

ABSTRACT Background: The diagnostic criteria for the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) include the possible presence of acquired surface dyslexia or dysgraphia. Acquired surface dyslexia is characterized by a greater difficulty in reading irregular words with the production of regularization errors. On the other hand, acquired surface dysgraphia is characterized by difficulties in writing irregularly spelled words, which are stimuli that produce phonologically plausible errors. The identification of these patterns in Spanish has been subject to controversy due to the orthographic transparency of the language and its lack of irregular words. However, differences do exist between reading (completely transparent) and writing (considerably irregular) and thus, designing tests to identify acquired surface dysgraphia is a simple task, since there are irregular words for writing in Spanish. Nevertheless, few cases of acquired surface dysgraphia have been reported in Spanish-speaking patients. In addition, the identification of acquired surface dyslexia in Spanish-speaking patients requires the use of tasks other than reading irregular words. Aims: The aim of this paper is to report the reading and writing impairments of a Spanish-speaking patient with svPPA, and show that it is possible to identify patterns of acquired surface dysgraphia and dyslexia in a transparent language. Methods and procedure: Single case study of a Spanish-speaking patient with svPPA. The tests administered were: writing to dictation of words (both regular and irregular) and nonwords, reading of words and nonwords (measuring accuracy and reaction times) and lexical decision with pseudohomophones. Outcomes and results: We found a regularity effect in the writing to dictation task with the generation of several phonologically plausible errors, a loss of lexical advantage in reading latencies although reading accuracy was conserved, and a pseudohomophone disadvantage effect in the lexical decision task; thus, resulting in a profile consistent with the patterns of acquired surface dysgraphia and dyslexia. Conclusions: The results obtained indicate it is possible to identify these patterns when the characteristics of the language are taken into consideration in the selection of tests to be administered. Therefore, it is possible to test for all the established criteria for svPPA in Spanish-speaking patients.

MORPHOLOGICAL DEVIATIONS PRODUCED BY INDONESIAN ADOLESCENT DYSLEXIC READERS

Even though the major problem of dyslexic readers is in their phonological awareness, morphological complexity of a language might also affect their performance in reading, especially for language with transparent orthography like the Indonesian language. This study aims to find the patterns of morphological deviations produced by Indonesian dyslexic adolescents during a reading activity. In this study, a set of instrument consisting of 160 words that were chosen based on their morphological complexity is prepared. The words were then combined into 55 sentences which then were asked to be read aloud by the participants. The result of morphological deviations indicated that the deviations occured equally frequent both in inflectional and derivational affixes. Most of the morphological deviation (i.e. 96%) occured in polymorphemic words. In addition, participants tend to simplify the polymorphemic words by omitting the affixes and reading only the root instead. At least 58% of the deviations were affix ommision. This means teachers of dyslexic readers need to provide more training on polymorphemic words, particularly those that have affixes.

Reading rate in Spanish-speaking students: A meta-analysis

Reading rate is a measure related to reading comprehension, especially in languages ​​with a transparent orthography such as Spanish. In spite of its potential for the follow-up of student reading learning or for the detection of dyslexia, there are few references that indicate the reading speed in Spanish in the different grades. In this work a meta-analysis is carried out to synthesize the available information and to detect which variables influence the reading speed. In this meta-analysis 45 publications are located that offer 113 measures of reading aloud and 54 of silent reading. The grade accounts for around 70% of the variance of reading rate results. The results are very heterogeneous and none of the variables chosen as moderators can explain this heterogeneity. However, moderator analysis show results that indicate a lower reading speed in Spanish American students than in Spanish students, lower speed in correct word per minute measurements than in word per minute measurements, and differences, at least in the early Elementary courses, according to the term in which the measurement is made. The meta-analysis offers the combined reading rate data aloud and silently from the first Elementary Education course to High School Juniors. In a few cases, these references can be broken down by terms. In comparison with other sources, it is surprising that those obtained here indicate slower speeds than those estimated in English.

GraphoLearn SI: Digital Learning Support for Reading Difficulties in a Transparent Orthography

Recognition of the importance of evidence-based technological tools that provide personalized learning opportunities is growing. This paper reports on a pilot study evaluating GraphoLearn for Standard Indonesian, a digital game environment that trains basic reading skills by extensive-but-playful exposure to grapheme–phoneme correspondences. The results obtained from 33 Indonesian first graders show that game progress was found to be a significant predictor of reading and decoding abilities both at the posttest and the 5-month follow-up assessment. Our results additionally indicated a significant interaction effect of game progress and letter–sound knowledge at posttest: Progress in the game was strongly related to reading and decoding fluency, but only for students with average to above-average pretest letter knowledge. To enable students with low letter knowledge at the outset to benefit fully from the game as well, we suggest extending the playing period to approximately 6 months to establish firmly letter knowledge and phonological awareness skills.

Velocidad lectora en alumnado hispanohablante: un metaanálisis

Reading rate is a measure related to reading comprehension, especially in languages with a transparent orthography such as Spanish. In spite of its potential for the follow-up of student reading learning or for the detection of dyslexia, there are few references that indicate the reading speed in Spanish in the different grades. In this work a meta-analysis is carried out to synthesize the available information and to detect which variables influence the reading speed. In this meta-analysis 45 publications are located that offer 113 measures of reading aloud and 54 of silent reading. The grade accounts for around 70% of the variance of reading rate results. The results are very heterogeneous and none of the variables chosen as moderators can explain this heterogeneity. However, moderator analysis show results that indicate a lower reading speed in Spanish American students than in Spanish students, lower speed in correct word per minute measurements than in word per minute measurements, and differences, at least in the early Elementary courses, according to the term in which the measurement is made. The meta-analysis offers the combined reading rate data aloud and silently from the first Elementary Education course to High School Juniors. In a few cases, these references can be broken down by terms. In comparison with other sources, it is surprising that those obtained here indicate slower speeds than those estimated in English.

Evaluating models of how morphological awareness connects to reading comprehension: A study in Portuguese

BackgroundReading comprehension is a complex skill, drawing on a range of resources. One is morphological awareness, or the awareness of the smallest meaningful units in language. Testing the predictions of the Simple View of Reading, we evaluate how morphological awareness relates to reading comprehension in a relatively transparent orthography.MethodThere were 70 Portuguese‐speaking children in Grade 2 in our study. The children completed measures of morphological awareness and reading comprehension, along with two potential mediators: word reading and listening comprehension. Children also completed control measures of phonological awareness and nonverbal ability.ResultsPath analysis showed that there were indirect effects of morphological awareness on reading comprehension through each of word reading and listening comprehension. There was no significant direct effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension beyond these mediators and controls.ConclusionsOur results provide a novel empirical confirmation of the predictions of current models of reading comprehension. We do so for readers of a relatively transparent orthography.HighlightsWhat is already known about this topic Many studies with English‐speaking children have demonstrated that morphological awareness contributes to reading comprehension. Much less is known about how this relation works and if it holds for readers of relatively transparent orthographies. What this paper adds This study shows that the relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension holds for children learning to read in the relatively transparent orthography of Portuguese. This study also shows just how these relations work. For Portuguese‐speaking children in Grade 2, the relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension is fully mediated by word reading and listening comprehension. Implications for theory, policy or practice Our findings provide support for the Simple View of Reading, highlighting the dual roles of word reading and listening comprehension in reading comprehension. Our findings point to targets for intervention; morphological awareness instruction might be most effective if paired with instruction on how morphology impacts both word reading and oral language.

Cross-lag analysis of early reading and spelling development for bilinguals learning English and Asian scripts

Reading and writing skills are intricately associated, and their mutual influence is seen as a dynamic process during literacy development for English. However, a broader understanding of the cross-domain development of literacy would be gained by examining literacy acquisition across different languages and scripts. An advantageous approach is to examine multiple language learning in a within-person design by investigating bilinguals during the earliest phases of literacy development. In this study, we contrast bilingual children who are learning English plus an Asian script (Chinese, Malay, or Tamil) to shed some light on language-general and -specific aspects of the interrelations of literacy skills. In a longitudinal design using cross-lag analysis, 620 bilingual children were administered reading and writing (spelling) tasks for English and their other script across 3 years (kindergarten into primary school entry). Models of English reading and writing were different for the three bilingual groups: Chinese and Tamil speakers showed relational patterns similar to monolingual results, but Malay speakers showed only a later reading-to-spelling influence. Models of cross-domain relations within each additional language also revealed differences across groups, suggesting language specific aspects of literacy development. Malay, a transparent orthography, supported bi-directional influence across skills consistently, while Chinese showed only an initial bidirectional influence, and Tamil supported a later spelling-to reading influence. Finally, cross-language influences differed between bilingual groups for each skill: with a consistent mutual influence for Malay–English reading, and a mutual influence for early Chinese–English spelling and later Malay–English spelling. Findings suggest that new perspectives of cross-linguistic models of literacy development are in order.

An audiovisual integration deficit underlies reading failure in nontransparent writing systems: An fMRI study of Chinese children with dyslexia

Establishing the associations between speech sounds and visual scripts is an essential step for reading acquisition. Audiovisual integration deficits have been proposed to be a cause of developmental dyslexia, and this has been evidenced by behavioral and neural findings from alphabetic languages with relatively transparent orthographies. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a lexical decision task, this study examined the neural correlates of audiovisual integration deficits in Chinese children with dyslexia and age-matched controls. The results indicated that the children with dyslexia showed a reduced audiovisual congruency effect in the left angular gyrus, left superior temporal gyrus and left middle and superior frontal gyrus. Moreover, dyslexics showed reduced functional connectivity for the congruency effect between the left angular gyrus and both the left lingual gyrus and left cerebellum. The regional activation and functional connectivity abnormalities might underlie the ill-developed correspondence between orthographic and phonological information in Chinese dyslexia. This study, for the first time, illustrates the neural mechanisms of the audiovisual integration deficit in dyslexia in a nontransparent logographic writing system, extending our understanding of the neural basis of dyslexia.

The Clock Counts - Length Effects in English Dyslexic Readers.

In reading, length effects (LEs) are defined as an increment in the time taken to read as a function of word length and may indicate whether reading is proceeding in an efficient whole word fashion or by serial letter processing. LEs are generally considered to be a pathognomonic symptom of developmental dyslexia (DD) and predominantly have been investigated in transparent orthographies where reading impairment is characterized as slow and effortful. In the present study a sample of 18 adult participants with DD were compared to a matched sample of typical developing readers to investigate whether the LE is a critical aspect of DD in an opaque orthography, English. We expected that the DD group would present with marked LEs, in both words and non-words, compared to typical developing readers. The presence of LEs in the DD group confirmed our prediction. These effects were particularly strong in low frequency words and in non-words, as observed in reading speed. These preliminary findings may have important theoretical implications for current understanding of DD.

Effects of training phonological awareness on children's reading skills

Phonological awareness and letter knowledge have been shown to be precursors of children's word reading and reading comprehension. As a consequence, promoting children's phonological awareness should result in better reading skills. In order to evaluate this assumption, we trained phonological awareness and letter knowledge of 370 German preschool children and compared their word reading and reading comprehension skills with those of a group of 99 untrained children. Our findings indicate strong intervention effects on children's phonological awareness and letter knowledge. However, this advantage did not result in better reading skills in general. Within the group of low-performing children, we found small effects on word reading. This effect was mediated by individual differences in phonological awareness. In summary, only for low-performing children do the findings support our theoretical assumptions. This may be attributable to differences in the orthographic transparency between German and English, which restricts a generalization of findings across languages.

Post-treatment reading development in children with dyslexia: the challenge remains.

The goal of this study was to examine the post-treatment development of word and pseudoword accuracy and fluency and its cognitive and linguistic predictors in Dutch children with dyslexia compared with typical readers in the upper primary grades. Word and pseudoword reading accuracy and fluency were assessed at the start and end of grade 5 and at the end of grade 6. Phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal short-term memory, vocabulary, and visual attention span were assessed at the start of grade 5. Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed that children with dyslexia were less accurate than typical readers and showed very little improvements in accuracy over time. They were also less fluent and showed less growth in reading fluency than typical readers. The children with dyslexia did improve more in word reading fluency than in pseudoword reading fluency over time. Visual attention span and phonological awareness predicted reading accuracy development in typical readers, while rapid naming predicted individual differences in reading fluency in children with dyslexia. It can be concluded that in the upper grades, children with dyslexia not only struggled with fluent reading, but they also still struggled with accurate reading in a relatively transparent orthography like Dutch, even after they had received a reading intervention to remediate their reading difficulties.

Factors Predicting Reading in Indonesian Adolescents

The current study investigates predictors of reading abilities of adolescents in Standard Indonesian (SI). Reading predictors typically signify, with some degree of error, essential cognitive skills needed for individuals to read effectively. This is crucial since it forms a key part of the initial steps to assess or identify reading-related language impairments such as dyslexia. In addition to measures of reading itself and nonverbal intelligence, the present research examines six empirically motivated potential predictors of reading and decoding: phonological awareness; phonological short-term memory; verbal and semantic fluency; rapid automated naming (RAN); motor control; familial risk; and, self-reported factors. The results show that RAN is a dominant predictor among the other factors that were considered in adolescent SI speakers. The results also show strong support for the notion that the importance of RAN increases as children age. Moreover, it is consistent with previous studies that have argued that RAN is a vital predictor of reading development in transparent orthographies.

The home literacy model in a highly transparent orthography

ABSTRACTWe investigated the extent to which home literacy activities during the preschool year would predict the development of children’s language and literacy skills in primary school, in a highly transparent Finnish language. Also, the correlates of maternal literacy activities during preschool were examined. Literacy and language skills of 1,880 children (6-year-olds at the baseline) were tested at 5 time points from the beginning of preschool to the end of Year 2; mothers filled in questionnaires at the end of preschool. The results showed that home teaching of reading at preschool age predicted children’s emergent literacy (letter knowledge, word reading fluency) in primary school, while shared reading predicted oral language skills (vocabulary, listening comprehension). Moreover, early letter knowledge was related to both the maternal teaching of reading and shared reading, while maternal beliefs and expectations about their children’s schooling and competence were associated with more frequent engagement in the teaching of reading.

Linguistic Materials and Metrics for the Creation of Well-Controlled Swedish Speech Perception Tests.

Purpose As factors influencing human word perception are important in the construction of speech perception tests used within the speech and hearing sciences, the purposes of this study were as follows: first, to develop algorithms that can be used to calculate different types of word metrics that influence the speed and accuracy of word perception and, second, to create a database in which those word metrics were calculated for a large set of Swedish words. Method Based on a revision of a large Swedish phonetic dictionary, data and algorithms were developed by which various frequency metrics, word length metrics, semantic metrics, neighborhood metrics, phonotactic metrics, and orthographic transparency metrics were calculated for each word in the dictionary. Of the various word metric algorithms used, some were Swedish language reimplementations of previously published algorithms, and some were developed in this study. Results The results of this study have been gathered in a Swedish word metric database called the AFC-list. The AFC-list consists of 816,404 phonetically transcribed Swedish words, all supplied with the word metric data calculated. The full AFC-list has been made publicly available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Conclusion The results of this study constitute an extensive linguistic resource for the process of selecting test items in new well-controlled speech perception tests in the Swedish language. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8330009.

Investigating the Double-Deficit Hypothesis in More and Less Transparent Orthographies: A Longitudinal Study from Preschool to Grade 2

ABSTRACTWe investigated the double-deficit hypothesis (DDH) in samples of U.S. (N = 489), Australian (N = 264), and Scandinavian (N = 293) children followed from preschool to grade 2. Children were assigned to double deficit, single deficit and no deficit subtypes in preschool, kindergarten, and grade 1 and compared on reading and spelling in grades 1 and 2. In most analyses, the double deficit subtype scored significantly lower in reading and spelling than the single deficits, a pattern of findings that was identical across samples. Moreover, across countries, RAN deficits showed a stronger effect on reading whereas PA deficits showed stronger effects on spelling. Overall, the results supported the basic premises of the DDH suggesting that the double deficit subtype represents the most impaired readers, and that RAN and PA are separable deficits with different effects on reading and spelling. The results also supported a universal view of literacy development, with similar predictive patterns of DDH subtypes across orthographies.

Embodied reading in a transparent orthography

The embodiment framework posits that reading comprehension requires simulation. That is, the reader must use perceptual, action, and emotional systems to create an analogical representation of the situation described in the text. Moved by Reading teaches children to simulate by having them a) move images on a computer screen to correspond to sentences (externalizing the simulation), and then b) imagine moving the images (internal simulation). Although Moved by Reading greatly enhances comprehension, it does not always produce transfer when children read new texts without manipulation. The decoding hypothesis provides an explanation: Before children can simulate the sentences, they must be able to decode the words. In orthographically opaque languages such as English, decoding skill greatly varies across children, hence limiting transfer when reading unfamiliar texts. If true, Moved by Reading should produce successful transfer in Spanish, an orthographically transparent language in which decoding is more transparent. As predicted, monolingual Spanish-speaking children taught simulation performed better than children in a control condition on comprehension tests a) for texts in which they moved images, b) for texts in which they imagined moving images, and c) most importantly, in an untrained transfer text. Thus, the data demonstrate the effectiveness of Moved by Reading in Spanish in line with predictions from the decoding hypothesis, and the results highlight a need for studies that directly compare the effects of this training across readers with different decoding skills and languages.

Reading Failure in a Completely Transparent Orthography Representing a Morphologically Highly Complex Agglutinative Language: the Case of Turkish

This study investigates differences in the word processing skills of students with and without reading difficulties who read Turkish, an entirely transparent orthography. Thirty-five students diagnosed as poor readers and 51 typically developing controls were tested across two experiments, one that assessed their ability to process identicalness of isolated real words as opposed to pseudowords and another that assessed their ability to judge semantic relatedness of two real words. Participants were from two education levels; half of them were 3rd-4th graders and half were 6th–7th graders. An integrative view of the findings points to an apparent failure of Turkish poor readers to develop a lexicalized reading route that mediates word recognition by means of permanent orthographic knowledge. Moreover, their ability to effectively process word letter sequences along a non-lexical grapheme-to-phoneme conversion-based reading route was found to be seriously restricted. Findings are discussed with direct reference to orthographic transparency, dual-route reading theory and the orthographic self-teaching concept.

Phonological awareness and reading in Northern Sotho – Understanding the contribution of phonemes and syllables in Grade 3 reading attainment

Background: The role of phonological awareness (PA) in successful reading attainment in Northern Sotho has received some attention. However, the importance of developing an awareness to the different phonological grain sizes that underlie decoding (i.e. to different dimensions of PA) has not been established in this language.Aim: This study assessed different levels of PA in Northern Sotho learners in order to determine the relationship between phoneme awareness, syllable awareness and reading.Setting: The research was conducted in Atteridgeville, a suburb in Tshwane. The participants were Grade 3 learners who spoke Northern Sotho as home language, and who received their literacy instruction in Northern Sotho in the foundation phase.Methods: The research was cross-sectional, with a correlational component. Phoneme awareness was assessed via a phoneme identification and elision task, whereas syllable awareness was assessed with a syllable elision task.Results: Statistical analyses revealed that Northern Sotho learners are significantly better at identifying syllables than phonemes, but that phoneme awareness predicts reading outcomes more accurately.Conclusion: This study suggests that phoneme awareness does not necessarily develop early or automatically in languages with a simple syllable structure and a transparent orthography and evaluates this finding against the predictions of the Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory. The importance of explicitly teaching phoneme–grapheme correspondences to Northern Sotho learners is highlighted.

Component skills of reading and their structural relations: evidence from three sub‐Saharan African languages with transparent orthographies

BackgroundWe examined the component skills of reading comprehension (i.e., letter sound knowledge, syllable reading fluency, decoding fluency, text or oral reading fluency and listening comprehension) and their structural relations using data from three sub‐Saharan African languages with transparent orthographies in a multilingual context.MethodsData from Kiswahili (N = 946), Kikamba (N = 444) and Lubukusu (N = 499) reading assessments at the end of Grade 2 in Kenya were analysed using path analyses.ResultsThe magnitudes of the relations were similar across the three languages with some differences amongst the languages. Total effects (regression weights), accounting for direct and indirect effects, varied across the component skills: text reading fluency (0.73 to 0.77), decoding fluency (0.49 to 0.82), letter sound knowledge (0.44 to 0.45), syllable reading fluency (−0.12 to 0.16) and listening comprehension (0.08 to 0.23).ConclusionsThe results indicate similar reading mechanisms across the three sub‐Saharan languages.

Cracking the Code: The Impact of Orthographic Transparency and Morphological-Syllabic Complexity on Reading and Developmental Dyslexia.

Reading is an essential skill in modern societies, yet not all learners necessarily become proficient readers. Theoretical concepts (e.g., the orthographic depth hypothesis; the grain size theory) as well as empirical evidence suggest that certain orthographies are easier to learn than others. The present paper reviews the literature on orthographic transparency, morphological complexity, and syllabic complexity of alphabetic languages. These notions are elaborated to show that differences in reading acquisition reflect fundamental differences in the nature of the phonological recoding and reading strategies developing in response to the specific orthography to be learned. The present paper provides a narrative, cross-linguistic and integrated literature review, thereby contributing to the development of universal reading models and at the same time pointing out the important differences between orthographies at the more detailed level. Our review also yields suggestions to devise language-specific instruction and interventions for the development of the specific reading strategies required by the characteristics of the orthography being acquired.