Dyslexia Profiles Across Orthographies Differing in Transparency: An Evaluation of Theoretical Predictions Contrasting English and Greek

Diamanti, Vassiliki; Goulandris, Nata; Campbell, Ruth; Protopapas, Athanassios

doi:10.1080/10888438.2017.1338291

Cited by 31 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Literacy skills were assessed with reading accuracy, text-reading fluency and spelling tasks. Reading accuracy and reading fluency are sensitive measures and can reveal reading difficulties in children who are reading in the Greek consistent orthography (Diamanti et al 2018). Spelling performance is another sensitive index of reading difficulty in Greek (Porpodas 1999, Protopapas andSkaloumbakas 2007).…”

Section: Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Having said that, reading accuracy difficulties are evident in children with dyslexia even in Grade 7 (Protopapas and Skaloumbakas 2007. With respect to phonological difficulties, children with dyslexia and DLD have been reported to show phonological deficits in tasks measuring phonological awareness, phonological shortterm memory and rapid automatic naming skills (e.g., Talli et al 2016, Diamanti et al 2018, Spanoudis et al 2018. Research in the semantic processing skills of Greek children with dyslexia and/or DLD is, however, almost entirely lacking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Semantic fluency difficulties in developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD): poor semantic structure of the lexicon or slower retrieval processes?

Mengisidou

Marshall

Stavrakaki

2019

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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Background Children with dyslexia and/or developmental language disorder (hereafter children with DDLD) have been reported to retrieve fewer words than their typically developing (TD) peers in semantic fluency tasks. It is not known whether this retrieval difficulty can be attributed to the semantic structure of their lexicon being poor or, alternatively, to words being retrieved more slowly despite semantic structure being intact. Aims To test two theoretical models that could potentially account for retrieval difficulties in semantic fluency tasks, namely, the Poor Lexical–Semantic Structure Model and the Slow‐Retrieval Model. Both models predict that children with DDLD will retrieve fewer items compared with TD children. However, while the Poor Lexical–Semantic Structure Model predicts a less sophisticated network of semantic connections between words in the lexicon, as evidenced by smaller clusters of related items in children with DDLD, the Slow‐Retrieval Model predicts intact inter‐item associations in the lexicon, as evidenced by the two groups’ clusters being of a similar size. The groups’ semantic fluency performance was therefore compared. How semantic fluency performance related to children's language, literacy, and phonological skills was also investigated. Methods & Procedures A total of 66 children with DDLD aged 7–12 years and 83 TD children aged 6–12 years, all monolingual Greek speakers, were tested on semantic fluency, using the categories ‘animals’, ‘foods’ and ‘objects from around the house’. The numbers of correct and incorrect responses, clusters and switches, and the average cluster size were computed. Children were also assessed on non‐verbal IQ, language, literacy and phonological tasks. Outcomes & Results In both groups, productivity in semantic fluency tasks correlated strongly with the numbers of clusters and switches, but not with average cluster size. The DDLD group produced significantly fewer correct responses and fewer clusters compared with the TD group, but the two groups showed similar switching and average cluster size. Children's language, literacy and phonological skills significantly predicted the number of correct responses produced, beyond the significant effect of age. Conclusions & Implications We conclude that poorer semantic fluency performance in children with DDLD results not from a lexicon with poor semantic structure, but rather from slower retrieval processes from a lexicon with intact semantic structure. The underlying causes of slow lexical retrieval still need further investigation.

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Section: Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic fluency difficulties in developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD): poor semantic structure of the lexicon or slower retrieval processes?

Mengisidou

Marshall

Stavrakaki

2019

Intl J Lang & Comm Disor

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“…Although significant associations between these predictors and reading have been reported in different orthographies (e.g., Dutch: De Jong, 2011;Finnish: Torppa et al, 2013;French: Plaza & Cohen, 2007;German: Moll, Fussenegger, Willburger, & Landerl, 2009;Greek: Protopapas, Altani, & Georgiou, 2013a;Spanish: Rodríguez, van den Boer, Jiménez, & de Jong, 2015;Chinese: Song, Georgiou, Su, & Shu, 2016), the majority of studies have been conducted with children acquiring the English writing system (see the recent meta-analysis by Araújo et al, 2015). These studies have typically investigated the prediction of reading accuracy, whereas in more consistent orthographies, reading fluency is the central dependent measure, as even very young and deficient readers tend to make few reading errors (e.g., Diamanti, Goulandris, Campbell, & Protopapas, 2018;Gangl et al, 2018;Wimmer, 2006;but see van Viersen et al, 2018). English orthography is atypically complex and has been demonstrated to be harder to acquire than other more transparent orthographies (Caravolas, Lervåg, Defior, Seidlová Málková, & Hulme, 2013;Frith, Wimmer, & Landerl, 1998;Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming as Longitudinal Predictors of Reading in Five Alphabetic Orthographies with Varying Degrees of Consistency

Landerl

Freudenthaler

Heene

et al. 2018

Scientific Studies of Reading

236

187

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Although phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are confirmed as early predictors of reading in a large number of orthographies, it is as yet unclear whether the predictive patterns are universal or language specific. This was examined in a longitudinal study across Grades 1 and 2 with 1,120 children acquiring one of five alphabetic orthographies with different degrees of orthographic complexity (English, French, German, Dutch, and Greek). Path analyses revealed that a universal model could not be confirmed. When we specified the best-fitting model separately for each language, RAN was a consistent predictor of reading fluency in all orthographies, whereas the association between PA and reading was complex and mostly interactive. We conclude that RAN taps into a language-universal cognitive mechanism that is involved in reading alphabetic orthographies (independent of complexity), whereas the PA-reading relationship depends on many factors like task characteristics, developmental status, and orthographic complexity. Phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) have consistently been found to be closely associated with children's reading development explaining unique variance in children's reading skills above and beyond general factors like age and nonverbal IQ (Araújo, Reis, Petersson, & Faísca, 2015; Melby-Lervåg, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012; Norton & Wolf, 2012). PA refers to the ability to identify and manipulate phonological segments in spoken words, and RAN denotes the ability to name serial displays of letters, digits, pictured objects, or colors as quickly as possible. PA is important as all orthographic systems represent phonological units in one way or another. Children with deficient access to the relevant phonological units will have problems to fully understand the mappings between a certain spoken language and its orthography and training of PA seems to improve reading outcomes (e.g., Suggate, 2016). An important and as yet unresolved issue is whether PA precedes reading acquisition or whether it evolves as a consequence or during the course of learning to read (

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“…In the full set, there was no significant difference in IQ between groups. Time 1 data are also presented in a cross‐linguistic study reported elsewhere (Diamanti, Goulandris, Campbell, & Protopapas, ). Time 2 data have not been reported previously.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking the effects of dyslexia in reading and spelling development: A longitudinal study of Greek readers

Diamanti

Goulandris

Stuart³

et al. 2018

Dyslexia

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In this study, we followed Greek children with and without dyslexia for 18 months, assessing them twice on a battery of phonological, reading, and spelling tasks, aiming to document the relative progress achieved and to uncover any specific effects of dyslexia in the development of reading and spelling beyond the longitudinal associations among variables that are observed in typical readers. A wideranging match was achieved between the dyslexic group and the younger reading-matched comparison group, enabling longitudinal comparisons on essentially identical initial performance profiles.Group differences were found in the development of tasks relying on phonological processing skill, such as phoneme deletion in pseudowords, pseudoword reading accuracy and time, as well as in graphemic spelling accuracy. The results confirm findings from cross-sectional studies of reading difficulty in the relatively transparent Greek orthography and are consistent with a phonological processing deficit underlying and reciprocally interacting with underdevelopment of reading and spelling skills in the impaired population.

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Dyslexia Profiles Across Orthographies Differing in Transparency: An Evaluation of Theoretical Predictions Contrasting English and Greek

Cited by 31 publications

References 51 publications

Semantic fluency difficulties in developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD): poor semantic structure of the lexicon or slower retrieval processes?

Semantic fluency difficulties in developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD): poor semantic structure of the lexicon or slower retrieval processes?

Phonological Awareness and Rapid Automatized Naming as Longitudinal Predictors of Reading in Five Alphabetic Orthographies with Varying Degrees of Consistency

Tracking the effects of dyslexia in reading and spelling development: A longitudinal study of Greek readers

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