Profiles of strengths and weaknesses in dyslexia and other learning difficulties

Abstract

A total of 83 children with different special educational needs (SEN) assessments were contrasted with a control group (N = 40) without special needs on measures that aimed to identify potential areas of strengths as well as weaknesses in these SEN groups. Carefully selected groups of dyslexics, dyspraxics, children with specific language difficulties, moderate learning disabilities, attention deficits and emotional/behavioural disorders were assessed on measures of literacy, phonological and verbal skills, non-verbal ability, problem behaviour scales and cognitive interference. Scores indicated that individual measures were relatively poor at specifically differentiating one SEN group from the controls and that all SEN groups presented evidence of literacy deficits despite potentially different causes for such acquisition difficulties. For most of the six SEN groups targeted, assessments that considered strengths as well as weaknesses provided a profile that specifically differentiated the group from the controls in contrast to the other SEN groups tested.

Perceptual learning as a tool for boosting working memory among individuals with reading and learning disability

“…Most individuals with learning disabilities (LDs), also read poorly, and have poor phonological and verbal memory skills (Snow et al, 1998;Everatt et al, 2008). In addition, many LDs also have difficulties with simple auditory discriminations (e.g.…”

A Review about Functional Illiteracy: Definition, Cognitive, Linguistic, and Numerical Aspects

“…It can appear even at a single word level, independently of intelligence and is adequate for a dyslexia diagnosis (Ramus et al, 2003). Such a deficit in phonological awareness was confirmed in children by many studies (Joanisse et al, 2000; Casalis et al, 2004; White et al, 2006; Everatt et al, 2008; Landerl et al, 2009; Varvara et al, 2014; Zoubrinetzky et al, 2014). The most common tasks were phonological fluency (Landerl et al, 2009; Varvara et al, 2014) and manipulation with phonemes as phoneme deletion (Joanisse et al, 2000; Landerl et al, 2009; Chung et al, 2010; Zoubrinetzky et al, 2014) and spoonerism tasks (White et al, 2006; Varvara et al, 2014).…”

“…In spelling, the tendency remains similar: both dyslexic children (White et al, 2006; Everatt et al, 2008; Chung et al, 2010) and adults (Hatcher et al, 2002; Beidas et al, 2013; Law et al, 2015) showed difficulties in their performance. In contrast, dyslexic adults performed well in the semantic fluency task (Hatcher et al, 2002) and vocabulary tasks (e.g., Cavalli et al, 2016) but the success of children were mixed (Joanisse et al, 2000; White et al, 2006; Everatt et al, 2008; Landerl et al, 2009; Varvara et al, 2014).…”

“…In contrast, dyslexic adults performed well in the semantic fluency task (Hatcher et al, 2002) and vocabulary tasks (e.g., Cavalli et al, 2016) but the success of children were mixed (Joanisse et al, 2000; White et al, 2006; Everatt et al, 2008; Landerl et al, 2009; Varvara et al, 2014). …”

The Brain Metabolites Within Cerebellum of Native Chinese Speakers who are Using the Traditional Logographic Reading and Writing Systems - A Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Approach to Dyslexia

“…The estimates of prevalence for dyslexia in the West have ranged from 5% (Deffenbacher, et al, 2004) to 15% (Stoodley, Fawcett, Nicolson, & Stein, 2006). In addition, the gifted talents associated with dyslexia are usually neglected (Chakravarty, 2009;Everatt, Weeks, & Brooks, 2008;Levy, 1983;von Karolyi, Winner, Gray, & Sherman, 2003). Although linguistic interventions (Breteler, Arns, Peters, Giepmans, & Verhoeven, 2010;Penolazzi, Spironelli, Vio, & Angrilli, 2010) and pharmaceutical drugs (Wilsher, et al, 1987;Zavadenko, Rumiantseva, & Tolstova, 2009) might assist the reading and spelling performance of the dyslexics, some of the disadvantages are persistent, such as the difficulties in reciting multiplication tables (Miles, 1993).…”