Developmental dyslexia in Norwegian: evidence from single-case studies

Abstract

This study provides detailed descriptions of the reading impairments in four 10-year-old Norwegian children with dyslexia. In all four cases reading comprehension was well in advance of the children's slow and inaccurate word-recognition skills. Phonological decoding (as assessed by pseudohomophone and nonword reading) appeared relatively unimpaired in three of the dyslexic cases, both in terms of speed and accuracy. However, reading errors showed that these children had particular difficulties with both phoneme length and phoneme quality awareness in reading. A 'phonemic identification deficit' account for developmental dyslexia in Norwegian children is suggested.

Longitudinal case-studies of developmental dyslexia in Norwegian

“…Results in the follow-up study were summarized in three relatively clear trends, suggesting a 'phonemic identification deficit' account for the reading impairments observed in the four children (Nergård-Nilssen, 2005). However, the results also revealed individual variations in dyslexic children's reading profiles.…”

“…whose composite score across one pseudohomophone and two orthographic selection subtests on a standardized test of decoding turned out to be very close to test norms) were selected to constitute a comparison group. The comparison group reported in the present paper is identical with the comparison group reported in an earlier study (Nergård-Nilssen, 2005). For these twenty-three children (mean age 10; 4) the mean composite reading score was 125 ðS:D: ¼ 35:67Þ compared to an average score at this age for the standardization sample of 118 ðS:D: ¼ 52Þ.…”

“…de Jong suggests that the reading disabled children had a general lack of capacity for the concurrent processing and storage of verbal information. The hypothesis put forward by de Jong (1998) might provide an explanation to Peter's reading style, employing an 'immediate on-line assembly strategy' (Landerl, Wimmer, & Frith, 1997), as indexed by high achievements on a pseudohomophone task and nonword tasks at the Follow-up assessments in Grade 5 (Nergård-Nilssen, 2005), implying that his verbal memory span was intact.…”

“…Reading profiles of the four children presented here were explored in an earlier study (Nergård-Nilssen, 2005). The aim of the present paper is to identify what cognitive and linguistic skills are associated with the particular patterns of reading problems observed in these four cases.…”