Cognitive profiles of poor readers of Kannada

Abstract

The alphasyllabary of Kannada comprises more than 400 symbols called akshara; each symbol is visuo-spatially complex with a consistent representation at the dual levels of the syllable and the phoneme. We investigated reading difficulties in Kannada among 8-12 year old children by conducting a between-groups followed by a case series analysis. We compared the children with reading difficulties with same age competent readers and younger readers who were similar in language level, matched on measures of vocabulary, syntactic processing, and morphological processing. Reading difficulties were characterized by poor akshara knowledge. Concomitant impairments were in syllable and phoneme level phonological skills, in rapid naming and in oral language skills. The case series analysis highlighted the variability of profiles among poor readers with the most common impairments being in akshara knowledge and phonological processing. Sub-groups of poor readers showed additional deficits in oral language, rapid naming, and visual processing skills. Together our findings indicate that the core deficit associated with reading difficulty in the alphasyllabary of Kannada is in the phonological domain. However, accompanying deficits in related skills, including visual processing, can further inhibit reading attainment. The findings from this study support a multifactorial model of reading development.

The role of language production mechanisms in children's sentence repetition: Evidence from an inflectionally rich language

“…To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine both grammatical and phonological encoding in sentence repetition and the pattern of associations between these and cognitive–linguistic measures such as vocabulary knowledge and nonword repetition within a model of the language production system. The findings provide support for growing evidence that the entire language system is recruited during sentence repetition while being sensitive to language-specific characteristics (e.g., inflections in Kannada: Nag & Snowling, 2011; prepositions in English: Moll et al, 2013). Other studies have shown that the task has been sensitive to subtle individual differences, particularly to variations at the lower end of the distribution (e.g., English: Conti-Ramsden et al, 2001; Redmond et al, 2011; Rice et al, 2005; Dutch: Wilsenach 2006).…”

Reading alphasyllabic hindi: contributions from phonological and orthographic domains

“…Nag and Snowling (2011) in their study also noted that phonemic manipulation was the only variable that could significantly differentiate between poor and normal Kannada readers when assessed on different phonological processing skills. In addition to phonemic awareness, akshara knowledge is seen to be significantly related to reading accuracy in many alphasyllabic languages such as in the Bengali (Nag & Sircar, 2008) and with the overall reading skills in Kannada (Nag, 2007;Nag & Snowling, 2011a).…”

Using artificial orthographies for studying cross-linguistic differences in the cognitive and neural profiles of reading

“…Phonemic awareness more specifically has been shown to be a good predictor of reading skill (Hulme et al, 2002; Snowling, 1981). Phonological deficits are also thought to be a primary deficit in reading disorders of alphasyllabic writing systems (Nag & Snowling, 2011), but children with poorer visual processing skills are also at heightened risk for poor reading achievement. The contrast is even more marked in the Chinese writing system, which uses a logographic mapping principle.…”