Effects of Visual and Phonological Distinctness on Visual–verbal Paired Associate Learning in Dutch Dyslexic and Normal Readers

Abstract

In three studies, the effects of visual and phonological distinctness on the visual-verbal paired associate learning of dyslexic and normal readers at the age of 10-12 were examined. We hypothesized that both groups would be equally affected by the visual distinctness of the pictures, whereas the learning performance of the dyslexic children would be more susceptible to the phonological distinctness of the verbal stimuli (words). As expected, in Study 1 we found that the visual distinctness of pictures had a similar effect on both groups. However, the results of Studies 2 and 3 on the effect of phonological distinctness did not support the hypothesis. Both reader groups were equally affected by the phonological distinctness of the words. In addition, we found that, although not consistently, dyslexic children tended to be worse in verbal learning, which could to a large extent be explained by their problems with phonological processing.

Word Learning Deficits in Children With Dyslexia

“…Our finding that shorter words were easier for children with dyslexia to learn than longer words is in line with Mayringer and Wimmer (2000) and Messbauer and de Jong (2006). However, it may be the case that "short" is a relative term.…”

“…Across studies of paired associate learning, school-aged children with dyslexia are less accurate at visual-verbal paired associate learning than their peers with typical reading skills (e.g., Litt & Nation, 2014;Mayringer & Wimmer, 2000;Messbauer & de Jong, 2003Thomson & Goswami, 2010;Vellutino, Steger, Harding, & Phillips, 1975), but this depends on the characteristics of words used in the study. Mayringer and Wimmer (2000) and Messbauer and de Jong (2006) reported conditions for visual-verbal paired associate learning in which children with dyslexia performed as well as their peers with typical reading skills. These conditions involved short words (three to four phonemes) that were familiar names.…”

Phonological awareness and the use of phonological similarity in letter–sound learning

“…Messbauer and de Jong (2006) found a similar result in a study on the paired associate learning of pictures and words by normal and dyslexic readers. In this study, rapid naming did not account for differences between the reader groups and was not related to learning performance.…”

Orthographic context and the acquisition of orthographic knowledge in normal and dyslexic readers

“…In both studies an effect of phonological similarity on the paired-associate learning performance was found, but the effect was similar in normal and dyslexic readers. Similar results were reported about the differential effects of phonological similarity on the short-term memory performance of normal and dyslexic readers (see for reviews, Messbauer & de Jong, 2006;Ramus & Szenkovitz, 2008). In the majority of these studies performance on sets of rhyming and non-rhyming words was compared.…”

“…Therefore, dyslexic's presumed problems with the acquisition of novel orthographic representations in a context with many neighbours could be due to their phonological similarity instead of their orthographic. This possibility was examined by Messbauer and de Jong (2006). In two studies, normal reading and dyslexic children were administered two pairedassociate learning tasks.…”