Developmental Dyslexia and Phonological Processing in European Portuguese Orthography

Abstract

This study analyzed the performance of phonological processing, the diagnostic accuracy and the influence on reading in children who were native speakers of an orthography of intermediate depth. Portuguese children with developmental dyslexia (DD; N = 24; aged 10 to 12 years), chronological-age-matched controls (CA; N = 24; aged 10 to 12 years) and readinglevel-matched controls (RL; N = 24; aged 7 to 9 years) were tested on measures of phonological processing (phonological awareness, naming speed and verbal short-term memory) and reading.The results indicated that the children with DD performed significantly poorer in all measures compared with the CA and RL. Phonological awareness and naming speed showed a high accuracy (receiver operating characteristics curve analysis) for discriminating the children with DD from the CA and RL, whereas the presence of abnormally low scores in phonological awareness and naming speed were more frequent in the DD group than in the controls and the normative population. Hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that phonological awareness was the most important predictor of all reading accuracy measures, whereas naming speed was particularly related to text reading fluency.

The 1‐min Screening Test for Reading Problems in College Students: Psychometric Properties of the 1‐min TIL

“…As expected and already found in Portuguese children (e.g. Moura et al, ; Pacheco et al, ; Sucena et al, ) and adults (Lima & Castro, ), college students showed a frequency effect, with significantly more high‐frequency words read in 30 s ( M = 65.90, SD = 7.74; 95% CI [63.70, 68.10]) than low‐frequency words ( M = 58.94, SD = 9.70; 95% CI [56.18, 61.70]), F (1, 49) = 78.50, p < .001, and a lexicality effect, with better performance for high‐frequency and low‐frequency words than for non‐words ( M = 43.70, SD = 8.81; 95% CI [44.80, 49.80]), both F s(1, 49) > 300, p s < .001. Performance in the 1‐min TIL was significantly associated with the three lists of the 3DM test: high‐frequency words, r = .48; low‐frequency words, r = .58; and non‐words, r = .69, all p s < .005, demonstrating, as expected, that the two tests share reading processes (Elbro et al, ; García & Cain, ; Lewandowski et al, ; Nation & Snowling, ).…”

“…Specifically, the 1‐min TIL scores were significantly associated with phoneme awareness, showing that the association previously reported in Portuguese children, including dyslexics (e.g. Moura et al, ; Sucena et al, ), continues to be reliable in young educated adults. The present results also converge with those showing word length effects (a trademark of phonological decoding at grapheme–phoneme unit‐level) in Portuguese college students, who flexibly adopt a phonological decoding strategy in specific reading conditions (at least in lexical decision and in reading aloud mixed lists of words and non‐words; Lima & Castro, ).…”

“…Nergård‐Nilssen & Hulme, ; Ramus et al, ; Reid et al, ; Vukovic et al, ; Wilson & Lesaux, ) and children (e.g. Moura et al, ). In the phoneme deletion task, participants were asked to say the target word (presented aurally) without the initial phoneme in the first block and without the last phoneme in the second block (total of 18 items).…”

How phonological awareness mediates the relation between working memory and word reading efficiency in children with dyslexia

“…From the above overview of the literature, two issues remain. First, children with dyslexia show both phonological awareness and word reading efficacy deficits (e.g., Moura et al, 2015). They still improve in phonological awareness when they grow older, whereas typically developing children are already at ceiling level in the lower grades of primary school (de Jong & van der Leij, 2003;Dandache et al, 2014).…”

“…Consequently, children with lower phonological skills are more likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia (Boets et al, 2010). Phonological awareness deficits in children with dyslexia have been shown to last into late adolescence (Bekebrede, van der Leij, Plakas, Share, & Morfidi, 2010; Melby‐Lervag et al, 2012; Moura, Moreno, Pereira, & Simões, 2015). However, it has also been found that such deficits in phonological awareness in children with dyslexia may change over time.…”