Most of the research into dyslexia has been carried out among children and has raised the question whether the characteristics of young dyslexics are similar to those of adult dyslexics. The aim of this research was, therefore, to confirm whether the cognitive deficits, which appear among young dyslexics on reading and reading related tasks, are similar among adult dyslexics. Four groups of subjects were tested in this study: two groups of fourth graders, dyslexic and normal readers, and two groups of students, compensated dyslexics and normal readers. A comparison of the differences in research measures between the young dyslexics and their control group, and between the adult dyslexics and their control group, clearly indicates that the difference between regular readers and dyslexics is significantly smaller in the adult group on orthographic tasks, and this difference increases in adults on phonological tasks. The findings of this study reinforce the assumption that dyslexics have particular difficulty with the phonological-auditory channel. Another main finding is the slow speed of processing in verbal and non-verbal tasks. It can be assumed that these problems start at a young age and persist in compensated adult dyslexics.

Poor reading skills of developmental dyslexics persist into adulthood with standard remediation protocols having little effect. Nevertheless, reading improves if readers are induced to read faster. Here we show that this improvement can be enhanced by training. Training follows a multi-session procedure adapted to silent sentence reading, with individually set, increasingly more demanding, time constraints (letter-by-letter masking). In both typical and dyslexic adult readers, reading times are shortened and comprehension improves. After training, the dyslexic readers' performance is similar to that of typical readers; moreover, their connected text reading times and comprehension scores significantly improve in standard reading tests and are retained at 6 months post training. Identical training without time constraints proves ineffective. Our results suggest that fluent reading depends in part on rapid information processing, which then might affect perception, cognitive processing and possibly eye movements. These processes remain malleable in adulthood, even in individuals with developmental dyslexia.

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Cross-linguistic studies provide a unique tool for the identification of universal processes in oral and written language, both in development and in breakdown (Annual Review of psychology, 52, 369-396). Examining the differential strengths and weaknesses of children with dyslexia in contrasting orthographies can help illumine both the more universal aspects of reading disabilities, as well as their individual language-specific attributes. The aim of this study, was to investigate the shared and distinctive characteristics of readers with dyslexia on reading and reading fluency across Hebrew and English orthographies. Differences between 60 Hebrew and Englishspeaking children with dyslexia on a battery of cognitive, linguistic, and reading measures will be discussed along with theoretical implications.

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