Influence of context-sensitive rules on the formation of orthographic representations in Spanish dyslexic children

Abstract

Spanish-speaking developmental dyslexics are mainly characterized by poor reading fluency. One reason for this lack of fluency could be a difficulty in creating and accessing lexical representations, because, as the self-teaching theory suggest, it is necessary to develop orthographic representations to use direct reading (Share, 1995). It is possible that this difficulty to acquire orthographic representations can be specifically related to words that contain context-sensitive graphemes, since it has been demonstrated that reading is affected by this kind of graphemes (Barca et al., 2007). In order to test this possibility we compared a group of dyslexic children with a group of normal readers (9–13 years), in a task of repeated reading. Pseudo-words (half short and half long) with simple and contextual dependent rules were used. The length effect reduction on the reading speed, after repeated exposure, was considered an indicator of orthographic representation development, as the length effect is strong when reading unknown words, but absent when reading familiar words. The results show that dyslexic children have difficulties in developing orthographic representations, not only with context-sensitive graphemes, but also with simple graphemes. In contrast to the control children, in the dyslexic group differences between reading times for short and long stimuli remained without significant changes after six presentations. Besides, this happened with sensitive context rules and also with simple grapheme–phoneme conversion rules. On the other hand, response and articulation times were greatly affected by length in dyslexic children, indicating the use of serial reading. Results suggest that the problems related to storing orthographic representations could be caused by a learning deficit, independently of whether the word contained context-sensitive rules or not.

Formation of Orthographic Representations in Spanish Dyslexic Children: The Role of Syllable Complexity and Frequency

“…The absence of a syllable‐frequency effect on the formation of orthographic representations was unexpected and is not easy to explain, as Jiménez and Hernández () found that the presence of high‐frequency syllables facilitated word naming. The results of this study suggest that orthographic consistency is the most important factor in determining the formation of an orthographic representation, according to the evidence that transparency affects decoding skills (Seymour et al, ) and orthographic learning (Suárez‐Coalla, Avdyli et al ., ).…”

“…This finding is in accordance with studies in other orthographic systems (e.g. Martens & de Jong, ) and complements other recent studies of the reading of Spanish dyslexic children (Suárez‐Coalla, Avdyly et al ., ; Suárez‐Coalla, Ramos et al ., ), which showed that children with dyslexia have difficulty storing orthographic representations both when stimuli are presented in the context of a story and when they are presented in isolation, probably because children with dyslexia have difficulty learning and automating the alphabetic code (Suárez‐Coalla & Cuetos, ).…”

“…This implies that reader characteristics may also affect the acquisition of orthographic knowledge. It has been reported that in Spanish, a basically consistent orthographic system, typical child readers are able to store orthographic knowledge about a new word after a few exposures to it (Suárez‐Coalla, Álvarez‐Cañizo, & Cuetos, ), whereas children with dyslexia have difficulty creating orthographic representations of words even after repeated readings (Suárez‐Coalla, Ramos, Álvarez‐Cañizo, & Cuetos, ; Suárez‐Coalla, Avdyli, & Cuetos, ).…”

“…Suárez‐Coalla, Avdyli et al () manipulated the context‐sensitivity of graphemes to determine whether this was a factor in the difficulty children with dyslexia had in acquiring orthographic representations. They found that Spanish children with dyslexia have difficulty forming orthographic representations, even of words made up of consistent graphemes.…”

“…It has been reported that in Spanish, a basically consistent orthographic system, typical child readers are able to store orthographic knowledge about a new word after a few exposures to it (Suárez-Coalla, , whereas children with dyslexia have difficulty creating orthographic representations of words even after repeated readings (Suárez-Coalla, Ramos, Suárez-Coalla, Avdyli, & Cuetos, 2014). Suárez-Coalla, Avdyli et al (2014) manipulated the context-sensitivity of graphemes to determine whether this was a factor in the difficulty children with dyslexia had in acquiring orthographic representations. They found that Spanish children with dyslexia have difficulty forming orthographic representations, even of words made up of consistent graphemes.…”