Reading in French-speaking adults with dyslexia

Abstract

This study investigated the reading and reading-related skills of 15 French-speaking adults with dyslexia, whose performance was compared with that of chronological-age controls (CA) and reading-level controls (RL). Experiment 1 assessed the efficiency of their phonological reading-related skills (phonemic awareness, phonological short-term memory, and rapid automatic naming (RAN)) and experiment 2 assessed the efficiency of their lexical and sublexical (or phonological) reading procedures (reading aloud of pseudowords and irregular words of different lengths). Experiment 1 revealed that adults with dyslexia exhibited lower phonological reading-related skills than CAs only, and were better than RL controls on the RAN. In experiment 2, as compared with RL controls, only a deficit in the sublexical reading procedure was observed. The results of the second experiment replicated observations from English-language studies but not those of the first experiment. Several hypotheses are discussed to account for these results, including one related to the transparency of orthographic systems.

Phonemic—Morphemic dissociation in university students with dyslexia: an index of reading compensation?

“…Our study of French university students with dyslexia confirms the persistence of deficits in reading (as assessed by the Alouette test), in pseudoword reading, and also in phonological reading-related skills (phonological awareness and short-term memory), both in terms of accuracy and speed (Martin et al, 2010). It is widely acknowledged that phonological deficits constitute the core characteristic of dyslexic readers, who cannot easily access or use phonological representations for decoding or retrieving the meaning of written words (see Boets et al, 2013).…”

“…Moreover, while it is well known that reading difficulties are sensitive to orthographic depth, adults with dyslexia still show deficits in reading speed in orthographic systems that are more transparent than English such as Italian (Re, Tressoldi, Cornoldi & Lucangeli, 2011), Spanish (Suárez-Coalla & Cuetos, 2015, Dutch and Polish (Reid, Szczerbinski, Iskierka-Kasperek, & Hansen, 2006), suggesting that reading deficits in adults with dyslexia are persistent in both deep and shallow orthographic systems. Despite their high levels of educational attainment, adults with dyslexia show word recognition deficits and they fail to achieve the phonological awareness level of both chronological-age (CA) and reading level (RL) controls (Bruck, 1993;Martin, Colé, Leuwers, Casalis, Zorman, & Sprenger-Charolles, 2010). Indeed, most studies of adults with dyslexia have found that performance on assessments of phonological awareness -i.e.…”

Reading difficulties in Spanish adults with dyslexia

“…The impairment in RAN is considered an Fig. 3 Position (initial, medium and final) by group interaction in letter detection task underlying cause (or symptom) of dyslexia and is repeatedly found in the literature with adults with dyslexia (Bruck, 1992;Bruck & Treiman, 1990;Martin et al, 2010;Parrila et al, 2007;Reid et al, 2006;Swanson & Hsieh, 2009;Szenkovits & Ramus, 2005). In some way, the observed phonological and RAN problems help us to confirm the diagnosis of dyslexia, because these problems are repeatedly described in the literature.…”

Lexical and Phonological Processes in Dyslexic Readers: Evidence from a Visual Lexical Decision Task

“…Supplementing parametric analyses with non‐parametric analyses to ensure validity has already been used in previous studies on DYS (e.g. Heiervang, Stevenson, & Hugdahl, ; Martin et al ., ).…”