Word recognition deficits in German: more evidence from a representative sample

Abstract

In a representative sample of German speaking dyslexic children, earlier findings on dyslexia in the highly consistent orthography of German were confirmed. In a sample of 78 dyslexic 3rd graders selected on the basis of their poor word recognition skills, reading accuracy for both words and non-words was deficient but high in absolute terms. This indicates that the highly consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences of German orthography in combination with the straightforward phonics teaching approach, which is usually applied in Austrian primary schools, allows even dyslexic children to acquire the process of phonological decoding. The central reading problem was extremely slow speed. Poor performance on a reading comprehension test was at least partly due to slow reading speed as well. Dyslexic children's spelling development was also severely delayed. The number of phonologically incorrect spellings was low; however, dyslexic children quite often produced spellings that are orthographically incorrect, indicating that they have not yet been able to develop an extensive and easily accessible orthographic lexicon. The most prominent cognitive deficit was reduced rapid naming speed closely followed by deficits in phonological awareness. Deficits in phonological memory were also evident (but mild) showing that despite marked differences in findings on reading and spelling skills of English dyslexic children, the underlying causes are very similar. The present sample of dyslexic children showed deficits in visual processing speed in addition to their linguistic deficits. However, this deficit in visual processing speed did not seem causally related to the children's reading and spelling deficits.

Naming Abilities and Orthographic Recognition during Childhood an Event-Related Brain Potentials Study

“…1; While in terms of reading, Spanish is a highly regular language, some specific phonemes can be represented by different graphemes when written. As reported by Landerl (2001) for German, orthographical knowledge in SN seems to be very limited and a deficit in writing is a typical feature of dyslexia in German. Something similar is found in Spanish, at least for slow-naming children, who showed significantly greater difficulty in recognizing orthographic violations, as well as more marked reading-writing acquisition problems compared to AN children.…”

“…The highly consistent grapheme-phoneme correspondences of these orthographies, together with the straightforward phonics-based teaching approach, allow even dyslexic children to acquire the process of phonological decoding (Landerl & Wimmer, 2008;Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003;Landerl, 2001). The different potential solutions to the mapping problem suggest that children will develop distinct reading strategies in response to differences in orthographic structure across orthographies; distinct strategies that might underlie differences in the dyslexic symptoms observed in children who acquire reading skills in shallow or deep orthographic systems.…”

A genome scan in multigenerational families with dyslexia: Identification of a novel locus on chromosome 2q that contributes to phonological decoding efficiency

“…24 In languages such as German, Italian and Finnish, with a more regular orthography than English, low reading speed, rather than accuracy of reading, is a prominent and persistent problem for dyslexics. [84][85][86][87][88] It has also been suggested that processing speed decreases more with aging in dyslexics as compared to nondyslexic individuals. 88 Therefore, in these countries, speed or automaticity of reading appears to be the seminal deficit.…”

Are Phonological Processes Separate from the Processes Underlying Naming Speed in a Shallow Orthography?

“…Following Bowers and Wolf's (1993) hypothesis that naming speed is a significant predictor of reading fluency in English-speaking children quite independently of phonological processing, there has been considerable interest in its role as a predictor of variation in reading abilities among children learning to read in transparent languages including Finnish (Korhonen, 1995), Spanish (Escribano, 2007;Jiménez et al, 2008;Novoa & Wolf, 1984), German (Frith et al, 1998;Landerl, 2001;Wimmer, Mayringer & Landerl, 2000), Italian (Di Filippo et al, 2005), and Dutch (van den Bos, 1998;Yap & van der Leij, 1993). Taken together, these studies' findings are broadly consistent with the view that rapid naming problems seem to be one of the main characteristics of dyslexic children learning to read in a transparent orthography.…”