Rosario Ortiz

Locus and Nature of Perceptual Phonological Deficit in Spanish Children With Reading Disabilities

The aims of this study were (a) to determine whether Spanish children with reading disabilities (RD) show a speech perception deficit and (b) to explore the locus and nature of this perceptive deficit. A group of 29 children with RD, 41 chronological age—matched controls, and 27 reading ability—matched younger controls were tested on tasks of speech perception. The effect of linguistic unit (word vs. syllable) and type of phonetic contrast (voicing, place and manner of articulation) were analyzed in terms of the number of errors and the response time. The results revealed a speech perception deficit in Spanish children with RD that was independent of the type of phonetic contrast and of linguistic unit.

The Double-Deficit Hypothesis in Spanish Developmental Dyslexia.

This study was designed to explore the double-deficit hypothesis (DDH) of developmental dyslexia in a sample of 133 Spanish children between the ages of 7 and 12 years. Four groups were formed on the basis of their performance in phonemic awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN): (1) one group with low performance in naming speed (NS), but average in phonological awareness (PA; naming deficit subtype); (2) a second group with low performance in PA, but normal in NS (phonological deficit subtype); (3) a third group with low performance in both variables (double-deficit subtype); and (4) a fourth group with no deficit in PA and NS (control group). The four groups were compared on measures of lexical access (naming word and pseudowords), fluency, orthographic abilities, and reading comprehension. The double-deficit subtype showed the most difficulties with reading, and the presence of deficit in RAN in naming deficit subtype affected measures of fluency but not orthographic abilities. However, fewer differences were noted between single-deficit subgroups. These results are partially consistent with the predictions of the DDH.

Is the deficit in phonological awareness better explained in terms of task differences or effects of syllable structure

The primary purpose of the study reported here was to explore the effects of the complexity of syllable structure and the effects of task differences in the explanation of deficit in phonological awareness (PA). A sample of 97 subjects was selected and organized into three different groups: 29 reading-disabled (RD) children, 41 normal readers matched in age with the former, and 27 younger normal readers at the same reading level as those with reading disabilities. We administered PA tasks which included items with different complexity of syllable structure. The results showed that the complexity of syllable structure had no particularly marked effect on the dyslexic children. Rather, the isolation task revealed the phonological deficit across all syllable structures.

Visual and auditory perception in preschool children at risk for dyslexia

Recently, there has been renewed interest in perceptive problems of dyslexics. A polemic research issue in this area has been the nature of the perception deficit. Another issue is the causal role of this deficit in dyslexia. Most studies have been carried out in adult and child literates; consequently, the observed deficits may be the result rather than the cause of dyslexia. This study addresses these issues by examining visual and auditory perception in children at risk for dyslexia. We compared children from preschool with and without risk for dyslexia in auditory and visual temporal order judgment tasks and same-different discrimination tasks. Identical visual and auditory, linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli were presented in both tasks. The results revealed that the visual as well as the auditory perception of children at risk for dyslexia is impaired. The comparison between groups in auditory and visual perception shows that the achievement of children at risk was lower than children without risk for dyslexia in the temporal tasks. There were no differences between groups in auditory discrimination tasks. The difficulties of children at risk in visual and auditory perceptive processing affected both linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. Our conclusions are that children at risk for dyslexia show auditory and visual perceptive deficits for linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli. The auditory impairment may be explained by temporal processing problems and these problems are more serious for processing language than for processing other auditory stimuli. These visual and auditory perceptive deficits are not the consequence of failing to learn to read, thus, these findings support the theory of temporal processing deficit.

Desarrollo de las habilidades fonológicas y ortográficas en niños normolectores y con dislexia durante la educación primaria

Resumen El objetivo de este trabajo fue investigar el papel que juega las habilidades fonológicas y ortográficas en el desarrollo de la lectura de niños españoles normolectores y con dislexia. La muestra total de estudio estaba formada por 397 alumnos de 2° a 6° nivel de primaria, de los cuales 308 alumnos fueron clasificados como normolectores y 89 alumnos con dislexia. Se evaluaron las habilidades fonológicas y ortográficas aplicando las tareas de la Batería Multimedia SICOLE-R. Los resultados indicaron que hubo diferencias entre ambos grupos, de forma que aunque tanto el grupo de normolectores como de disléxicos mostraron una progresión en la adquisición de las habilidades fonológicas y ortográficas, en el caso de los disléxicos esta progresión ocurre con una mayor lentitud. Finalmente, nuestros resultados apuntan a que la relación entre las habilidades fonológicas y ortográficas difiere en función del grupo, así en el grupo de normolectores existe un umbral de habilidad fonológica a partir del cual se produce una mayor progresión de la habilidad ortográfica, mientras que en el grupo de disléxicos no se encontró dicho patrón.