The self-esteem, anxiety and past and present educational histories of 16 dyslexic university students and 16 matched controls were compared. Self-esteem was measured using the Culture-free Self-esteem Inventory and anxiety was measured with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. A questionnaire devised by the research team was used to gather information on past and present educational histories, including a number of questions that could be rated on a five point scale. The dyslexic group was found to have significantly lower self-esteem than the controls. On the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory there was no significant difference between the groups. On the five point rating scales the dyslexic group reported themselves as feeling more anxious and less competent in their written work at school than the controls and rated themselves at university as less competent both in their written work and in their academic achievements.

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This paper looks at the spelling errors that occurred in the spontaneous writing of 12-year-old children. A number of errors occur that are not addressed by the conventional approaches to spelling and which we can best understand by taking account of the psychological context in which they occur. One set of errors relates more to incorrect articulation than to poor spelling. A second set indicates the role of morphemic factors in the spelling of inflected words. Two other sets, one consisting of lexical substitutions, the other of words split into two parts, indicate the existence of a device that monitors the identity of what we write.

Prospective memory (PM) is memory for delayed intentions. Despite its importance to everyday life, the few studies on PM function in adults with dyslexia which exist have relied on self-report measures. To determine whether self-reported PM deficits can be measured objectively, laboratory-based PM tasks were administered to 24 adults with dyslexia and 25 age- and IQ-matched adults without dyslexia. Self-report data indicated that people with dyslexia felt that time-based PM (TBPM; requiring responses at certain times in the future) was most problematic for them and so this form of PM was the focus of investigation. Whilst performing the ongoing task from which they were required to break out every 3 min to make a PM-related response, the participants were allowed to make clock checks whenever they wished. The cognitive demands made on ongoing behaviour were manipulated to determine whether loading executive resources had a mediating role in dyslexia-related deficits in PM, resulting in three tasks with varying working memory load. A semi-naturalistic TBPM task was also administered, in which the participants were asked to remind the experimenter to save a data file 40 min after being given this instruction. Dyslexia-related differences were found across all three computerized tasks, regardless of cognitive load. The adults with dyslexia made fewer correct PM responses and also fewer clock checks. On the semi-naturalistic task, the participants with dyslexia were less likely to remember to remind the experimenter to save the file. This is the first study to document PM deficits in dyslexia using objective measures of performance. Since TBPM impairments were found under more naturalistic conditions as well as on computerized tasks, the results have implications for workplace support for adults with dyslexia.

Dyslexia-related PM deficits were found under both laboratory and everyday conditions in the same participants; the first time that this has been demonstrated. These findings support previous experimental research which has highlighted dyslexia-related deficits in PM when the enacting of intentions is based on time cues and/or has to be self-initiated rather than being in prompted by environmental events.