Persistence of dyslexics' phonological awareness deficits.

Abstract

This study examined the phonological awareness skills of dyslexic children, adults with childhood diagnoses of dyslexia, and good readers at various age levels. Comparisons of the dyslexics to good readers of the same age or the same reading level indicated that dyslexics do not acquire appropriate levels of phoneme awareness, regardless of their age or reading levels, although they eventually acquire appropriate levels of onset-rime awareness. Even adults with fairly high levels of word recognition skill show phoneme awareness deficits. For normal readers reliable increases in phoneme awareness were associated with age and reading level, whereas for dyslexic subjects these associations were not reliable.

Developmental changes in brain regions involved in phonological and orthographic processing during spoken language processing

“…We further expected that this developmental increase might be especially pronounced for the more difficult conflicting word pairs because the conflict between orthographic and phonological information in these conditions may place an extra burden on phonological processing and therefore require greater recruitment of these regions. Although previous neuroimaging research has not established developmental correlations in left fusiform gyrus during spoken word processing, developmental increases in brain activation in this region may be expected because it has been implicated in orthographic processing, and behavioral research indicates that orthographic and phonological processes become more interactive with development (Bruck 1992;Tunmer and Nesdale 1982;Zecker 1991), perhaps as a result of increasingly automatic access to orthographic representations during spoken word processing as children gain more exposure to print.…”

“…The Booth et al (2004) study did not establish differences between adults and children in fusiform gyrus, but behavioral research has shown developmental increases in the effect of orthographic information in auditorily-presented phonological tasks across a collective age range of 5 to 11 years (Bruck 1992;Tunmer and Nesdale 1982;Zecker 1991). For example, Zecker (1991) employed an auditory rhyme decision task in children ranging from 7 to 11.5 years of age.…”

Auditory word identification in dyslexic and normally achieving readers

“…Phonological deficits are thought to underlie critical components of the reading process such as the learning of spelling-sound correspondences and the development of efficient word recognition (Bruck, 1992;Rack, Snowling, & Olson, 1992;Share, 1995;Stanovich & Siegel, 1994). Phonological deficits may also be causally related to specific kinds of language processing difficulties outside the domain of reading, including poor phonological awareness (Bruck, 1992;Liberman & Shankweiler, 1985;Manis, Custodio, & Szeszulski, 1993;Pratt & Brady, 1988;Swan & Goswami, 1997), inefficient use of verbal working memory (Berninger et al, 2006;Brady, Shankweiler, & Mann, 1983;Griffiths & Snowling, 2002;McDougall, Hulme, Ellis, & Monk, 1994), and slow access to the mental lexicon as manifested in naming tasks (Denckla & Rudel, 1976;Wolf & Bowers, 1999).…”

A genome scan in multigenerational families with dyslexia: Identification of a novel locus on chromosome 2q that contributes to phonological decoding efficiency

“…3 Diagnosis is usually made during elementary school years, but is complicated by variation in educational experience and developmental changes in phenotypic expression. 4 Although with appropriate educational intervention, most affected individuals eventually achieve some proficiency in reading and writing skills, deficits in fluent oral reading and spelling often persist into adulthood [5][6][7][8][9] and may have long-term educational, economic, and social repercussions.…”

“…10 Phonological processing deficits, which are a core deficit in dyslexia, [11][12][13][14] may persist even in adults whose dyslexia appears to be 'compensated'. 6,9,[15][16][17][18] Multiple lines of evidence have led to the consensus that dyslexia has a genetic basis. 18,19 Rare families have been described in which dyslexia as a categorical diagnosis appears to be transmitted as a single gene defect 20,21 and there is evidence for transmission patterns of dyslexia-associated sub-phenotypes consistent with Mendelian modes of inheritance.…”