Summary : Learning to spell words : Difficulties in developmental surface dyslexia. Word spelling performance of normal children from the first to the fifth grade was analysed and compared with the performance of children having a reading and spelling impairment characteristic of surface dyslexia. The quantitative analysis of their productions for word spelling to dictation showed that the performance of children with surface dyslexia was very similar to that of younger control children of the same reading level. The qualitative analysis of the erroneous spellings showed that for children with surface dyslexia, knowledge of the phonology-to-orthography correspondences was comparable to that of chronological-age-matched children. In contrast, the lexical knowledge of children with surface dyslexia was very poor and close to that of very beginning readers. The results suggest that the spelling deficit associated with developmental surface dyslexia results from a cognitive disorder that prevents the establishment of specific lexical spelling knowledge. Key words : spelling, development, surface dyslexia, surface dysgraphia, retardation vs deviance.

Summary: Developmental dyslexia and visuo-spatial attention. This paper gives an overview of the literature on the visuo-perceptual and visuo-attentional deficits of dyslexic children. The hypothesis that visuo-attentional problems cooccur with dyslexia was assessed through a task of search for a target among distractors. Serial-attentional visual processing was required in one task condition (searchfor 0 among Qs) whereas the other condition involved parallel/automatic processing (search for Q among 0 s). Ten dyslexic subjects constituted the experimental group. Their performance was compared to that of 20 non-dyslexic children, 10 matched for chronological age and 10 for reading age. The performance of dyslexic subjects was similar to that of children matched for chronological age in the parallel/automatic condition. In contrast, their performance differed by an increased search slope front that of the two control groups in the seriallattentional condition. These results suggest the existence of visuo-attentional deficits in dyslexic children. Key words : visual search, parallel vs attentional processing, developmental dyslexia.

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Catherine Martinet, Marilyne Bosse, Sylviane Valdois, Marie-Jeanne Tainturier. Existe-t-il des stades dans l'acquisition de l'orthographe d'usage ? This paper questions the main proposal of the stade models of spelling acquisition which postulate that children go through a série of stages characterised by the acquisition of specific processing abilities during learning. Two kinds of evidence against this hypothesis are presented here through the analysis of neuropsychological and experimental data. It is argued that the mechanisms underlying normal reading establish very early during development, their involvement in processing being essentially determined by word familiarity. Catherine Martinet, Marilyne Bosse, Sylviane Valdois, Marie-Jeanne Tainturier. Existe-t-il des stades dans l'acquisition de l'orthographe d'usage ? This paper questions the main proposal of the stade models of spelling acquisition which postulate that children go through a série of stages characterised by the acquisition of specific processing abilities during learning. Two kinds of evidence against this hypothesis are presented here through the analysis of neuropsychological and experimental data. It is argued that the mechanisms underlying normal reading establish very early during development, their involvement in processing being essentially determined by word familiarity.