Marta Łockiewicz

Characteristics of cognitive deficits and writing skills of Polish adults with developmental dyslexia

The present study was aimed at analysing cognitive deficits of dyslexic adults, and examining their written language skills in comparison with their peers. Our results confirm the presence of a certain profile of symptoms in adult dyslexics. We noticed deficits in: phonological (verbal) short-term memory, phonological awareness, rapid automatised naming (speed, self-corrections), visual perception and control, and visual-motor coordination. Moreover, the dyslexic participants, as compared with their nondyslexic peers, produced more word structure errors whilst writing an essay. However, there were no significant differences between the two groups in the length of the essay, the number of linguistic and punctuation errors, the number of adjectives, and stylistic devices.

Psychological Resources of Adults With Developmental Dyslexia

The aim of our study was to describe specific psychological resources of adults with developmental dyslexia and compare them with psychological resources of adults without developmental dyslexia. Potential differences were analyzed in visual-spatial, creative, and motivational abilities. No evidence was found for either creative, or visuospatial superiority in adults with developmental dyslexia. The results suggest, however, that visual-spatial processing of nonverbal material by adults with developmental dyslexia allows them to efficiently execute tasks that are based on sequential material. Moreover, the participants with specific difficulties in reading and writing exhibited a significantly higher level of aspirations than their peers without such difficulties with a comparable level of educational achievement. These results suggest that succeeding in different fields by highly functioning adult dyslexics may depend on personality and motivational factors, rather than cognitive factors.

Maternal romantic attachment, and antenatal and postnatal mother–infant attachment in a sample of Polish women

In this exploratory study, we evaluated the relationship between a womans self-reported romantic attachment style (as measured with The Attachment Styles Questionnaire), her experience of pregnancy, antenatal (The Maternal–Fetal Attachment Scale) and postnatal (Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire) attachment with her baby, and depressive symptomatology (The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale). In the first stage of the study 162 pregnant females participated; of these, 64 were followed up in the second stage. The maternal romantic attachment style predicted attachment with the baby in the antenatal, but not in the postpartum period. The anxious-ambivalent romantic attachment style predicted more interaction with and attributing more characteristics to the foetus, secure attachment style was positively correlated with role taking, and avoidant—with attributing more characteristics to the foetus. In the postpartum period, the correlation between antenatal and postnatal attachment was only moderate; role taking during pregnancy correlated with anxiety about care for an infant. However, our study shows the association of the profile of anxious-ambivalent romantic attachment with postpartum depression, which heightens the risk of postnatal mother–infant bonding impairments.

MEMORY IMPAIRMENTS IN ADULTS WITH DYSLEXIA

The aim of our study was to analyze the functioning of various aspects of memory in adults with developmental dys lexia, as compared to adults without developmental dyslexia. Our research involved a total of 180 adults, mostly students and university graduates from the Tri-City metropolitan region in north central Poland. The criterion group consisted of 93 adults with developmental dyslexia, while the control group consisted of 87 adults without developmental dyslexia. The results obtained confirm the assumption of a lower level of functioning of individuals with dyslexia in relation to phonemic analysis and phonemic awareness, phonological awareness and verbal working memory, visual working memory and perception in a task requiring the analysis and synthesis of details of a complex pattern, recalling data from the mental lexicon. The two groups did not differ in terms of working visuospatial memory (spatial span). These results are consistent with a majority of scientific reports on memory function ing in adults with developmental dyslexia. Our findings confirm the phonological deficit hypothesis, as the most profound disturbances were observed in phonological processing and verbal working memory. Moreover, our studies do not provide support for the compensation model of dyslexia, as diverse memory deficits persist into adulthood. However, adults with dyslexia were aware of their cognitive limitations in terms of memory.

Polish as L1, English as L2: the linguistic transfer impact on Second Language Acquisition stemming from the interlingual differences: implications for young learners education

Research has shown that learners of different linguistic backgrounds make similar errors, which is due to linguistic transfer. Cross-linguistic similarities between L1 and L2 can result in: positive transfer, negative transfer, and differing lengths of acquisition. The bigger the difference between the languages, the bigger Second Language Acquisition difficulties and more numerous potential negative transfer areas. This effect is visible in the case of Polish as L1 and English as L2. English and Polish differ in terms of pronunciation (e.g. vowel-based vs. consonant-based), spelling (e.g. opaque vs. semi-transparent), grammar (e.g. fixed vs. flexible word order), syntax (e.g. analytic vs. synthetic), and vocabulary. Therefore, second language instruction should include the errors caused by linguistic transfer, which would facilitate the selection and development of effective instruction methods and techniques.68-76

Modele zasobów psychologicznych osób dorosłych z dysleksją i bez tego zaburzenia

Self-regulation, anxiety, depressiveness, personalisty styles, and work preoccupation in young adults The aim of the study