Phonological and Cognitive Reading Related Skills as Predictors of Word Reading and Reading Comprehension among Arabic Dyslexic Children

Abstract

The present study sought to identify cognitive reading-related skills (i.e. visual attention, rapid automatized naming and working memory) that might distinguish dyslexic Arabic children from skilled ones in 4 th and 5 th grades, and to examine the potential contribution of these factors to word reading and reading comprehension. Two experiments were conducted for this purpose. In Experiment 1, normal readers (N = 108) and dyslexics (23) were given a set of literacy tasks, visual attention, and rapid automatized naming. The results indicated that dyslexic children exhibited lower reading-related skills than controls. Visual attention and phonological processing were able to predict word reading. Experiment 2 was carried out on 36 dyslexic children compared to chronological-age controls. This experiment was designed to assess the relation between phonological awareness and working memory with word recognition and reading comprehension. Results showed significant differences between groups in literacy scores. In addition, inter-correlations indicated a strong relation between word recognition and reading comprehension on one hand and phonological awareness and verbal working memory on the other. Regression analyses showed that rapid naming, visual attention, and verbal working memory were significantly associated with literacy. The findings underscored the importance of cognitive skills in the acquisition of Arabic literacy and emphasized persistent difficulties in dyslexic children from multiple causes.

Effectiveness of a Phonological Awareness Training for Arabic Disabled Reading Children: Insights on Metalinguistic Benefits

“…Nous avons recherché l'effet de l'entrainement phonologique axé sur la manipulation et l'identification des phonèmes / syllabes et la segmentation des mots, sur deux habiletés métalinguistiques liées à la lecture: la conscience morphologique et la dénomination rapide automatisée (RAN), comme principaux facteurs prédictifs de la dyslexie en arabe (Layes, Lalonde, Mecheri, Rebaï, 2015). Les résultats ont montré que les dyslexiques ont nettement amélioré leurs performances dans toutes les mesures post-intervention y compris les compétences métalinguistiques, indiquant une forte association entre ces variables.…”

“…RAN depends on the subject's ability to retrieve phonological information and is linked to reading development in different orthographies (Layes et al, 2015, Manis, Seidenberg, & Doi, 1999Swanson, Trainin, Necoechea &, Hammill, 2003).…”

“…In addition, 20 pseudo-words (α = .94) controlled for orthographic length (Layes, et al, 2015) were used. Frequency was determined by consulting the Aralex lexical database for Modern Standard Arabic (Boudelaa & Marslen-Wislon, 2010), over 25 appearances per million being frequent.…”

“…The current study examined the effectiveness of a phonological awareness-based intervention in disabled and normal Arabic children in 4 th and 5 th grades on concurrent metalinguistic factors in reading acquisition, i.e. morphological awareness (MA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN), identified as core metalinguistic predictors of reading ability beside the phonological decoding measured by pseudo-word identification examined in a previous study (Layes et al, 2015).…”

“…Particular attention was paid to phonological training of two metalinguistic readingrelated skills: morphological awareness (MA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN), underscored as main predictive metalinguistic factors in Arabic dyslexia (Layes, Lalonde, Mecheri, Rebaï, 2015). The PA training program focused on phoneme/syllable identification, phoneme matching, and word segmentation.…”