Do Italian dyslexic children use the lexical reading route efficiently? An orthographic judgment task

Abstract

The study uses an orthographic judgment task to evaluate the efficiency of the lexical reading route in Italian dyslexic children. It has been suggested that Italian dyslexic children rely prevalently on the sub-word-level routine for reading. However, it is not easy to test the lexical reading route in Italian directly because of the lack of critical items (irregular words), so visual lexical decision tasks and the comprehension/detection of pseudo-homophones are often used. While the former may also be solved on the basis of visual familiarity or phonological re-codification, the latter also involves conceptual and syntactic skills. Eleven dyslexic children participated in the study, performing an orthographic judgment task on stimuli with two phonologically plausible spellings, of which only one was orthographically correct. Their performance was compared with those of 11 proficient readers. The dyslexic children showed selective impairment in detecting phonologically plausible errors, but their performance was normal when required to judge errors inserted in words with regular orthography, i.e., devoid of orthographic ambiguity, and for which a sub-word-level reading procedure is sufficient to guarantee a good performance. Overall, data are coherent with a diagnosis of surface dyslexia, with most children showing defective orthographic lexical processing.

Do dyslexics misread a ROWS for a ROSE?

“…All the dyslexic readers, across a wide age range and from both familial and clinically drawn samples, appeared to make less effective use of verification, suggesting that dyslexia has consequences for the verification process. Similar findings are reported in more transparent languages, for instance, Italian dyslexics also show deficit performance in rejecting phonologically plausible errors (Marinelli, Angelelli, Notarnicola, & Luzzatti, 2009). A problem with this process can also account for their higher error rates to pseudohomophones, which effectively are misspelled words that a dyslexic reader may not detect as a misspelling.…”

Morpheme‐based Reading and Spelling in Italian Children with Developmental Dyslexia and Dysorthography

“…This difficulty produced over-reliance on sub-lexical strategies, which hampered especially reading speed (e.g. The main reliance of children with dyslexia on sub-lexical processing in reading was evident in orthographic judgement tasks, in which they failed to recognize real words from their phonologically plausible but orthographically incorrect fakes (*CUOTA form QUOTA/kwota/(=rate); Marinelli, Angelelli, Notarnicola, & Luzzatti, 2009). The main reliance of children with dyslexia on sub-lexical processing in reading was evident in orthographic judgement tasks, in which they failed to recognize real words from their phonologically plausible but orthographically incorrect fakes (*CUOTA form QUOTA/kwota/(=rate); Marinelli, Angelelli, Notarnicola, & Luzzatti, 2009).…”

“…Note that for TD, children did not perform the 'correction of pseudo-homophones' task and that for the 'orthographic judgement task ' (Marinelli et al, 2009) normative data were not available and only raw (percentage of accuracy) data are reported. The present study assessed whether morphemes affect (1) younger children, with and without dyslexia; (2) spelling as well as reading; and (3) words with low-frequency morphemes.…”

“…Note that for TD, children did not perform the 'correction of pseudo-homophones' task and that for the 'orthographic judgement task ' (Marinelli et al, 2009) normative data were not available and only raw (percentage of accuracy) data are reported. Note that for TD, children did not perform the 'correction of pseudo-homophones' task and that for the 'orthographic judgement task ' (Marinelli et al, 2009) normative data were not available and only raw (percentage of accuracy) data are reported.…”

Lexical and sublexical orthographic processing: An ERP study with skilled and dyslexic adult readers

“…To provide a complete scenario, we further manipulated reading competence, so average and impaired dyslexic readers were compared as a between-subject factor. In the recent years, an increasing number of studies have provided evidence for a failure in orthographic processing in dyslexia, as expressed by behavioral (Araújo, Faísca, Bramão, Petersson, & Reis, 2014;Bergmann & Wimmer, 2008;Marinelli, Angelelli, Notarnicola, & Luzzatti, 2009;Marinus & de Jong, 2010) and neural correlates such as dyslexic vOT under activation (Hawelka, Gagl, & Wimmer, 2010;Maurer et al, , 2011van der Mark et al, 2009;Wimmer et al, 2010) or absent modulations of N1 responses to letter strings vs. symbols . Considering previous interpretations of impaired vOT orthographic processing in dyslexia as a tuning deficit at sublexical or lexical level van der Mark et al, 2009;Wimmer et al, 2010), we would expect a condition-specific group effect in N1 waveform as well, depending on whether this component reflects processing at these levels (since selective responses to letters in the N1 time window most likely originate from the inferior occipitotemporal cortex; Maurer & McCandliss, 2007;Tarkiainen, Helenius, Hansan, Cornelissen, & Salmelin, 1999).…”