Spelling Impairments in Italian Dyslexic Children with and without a History of Early Language Delay. Are There Any Differences?

Abstract

Language delay is considered a frequent antecedent of literacy problems and both may be linked to phonological impairment. However, while several studies have examined the relationship between language delay and reading impairment, relatively few have focused on spelling. In this study, spelling performance of 28 children with developmental dyslexia (DD), 14 children with a history of language delay (LD), and 14 children without (NoLD) and 28 control participants were examined. Spelling was investigated by a writing to dictation task that included orthographically regular stimuli (word and non-words), as well as words with unpredictable transcription. Results indicated that all dyslexic participants underperformed compared to controls on both regular and unpredictable transcription stimuli, but LD performance was generally the worst. Moreover, spelling impairment assumed different characteristics in LD and NoLD children. LD children were more sensitive to acoustic-to-phonological variables, showing relevant failure especially on stimuli containing geminate consonants but also on polysyllabic stimuli and those containing non-continuant consonants. Error analysis confirmed these results, with LD children producing a higher rate of phonological errors respect to NoLD children and controls. Results were coherent with the hypothesis that among dyslexic children, those with previous language delay have more severe spelling deficit, suffering from defective orthographic lexical acquisition together with long-lasting phonological difficulties.

A Mini-Review on Detection Methods of Microcystins

“…MCs are potent and specific inhibitors of protein phosphatases 1 (PP1) and protein phosphatases 2A (PP2A) from both mammals and higher plants [ 27 ]. This may alter the expression levels of miRNA, induce cytoskeleton disruption, DNA destruction, inflammation, autophagy and apoptosis [ 14 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. Exposure to MCs may severely damage mammalian organs including the liver, intestines, brain, heart, lungs, kidney and reproductive system.…”

Reading Skills in Deaf Subjects: Role of Psycholinguistic Factors and Global Influences in Affecting Reading Performance

“…The phonological deficit and language delay may have consequences on the learning of reading and writing skills. Indeed, even in hearing children the presence of a language delay reflects on the quality of written language acquisition and text comprehension (Angelelli et al, 2016;Chilosi et al, 2009). In fact, deaf subjects report less adequate written language skills compared to hearing people, matched for age and years of education (Williams & Mayer, 2015); moreover, in most cases, the difficulties are also found after some periods of rehabilitation (Bertone & Volpato, 2009).…”

Studies on spelling in the context of dyslexia: a literature review

“…The spelling performance was investigated in a study with Italian dyslexic children 15 with and without history of delay in the acquisition of the oral language. The results presented themselves coherent with the hypothesis that dyslexic children with history of oral language disorder present more severe orthographic deficit.…”

“…However, in another French study 15 , the spelling errors in dyslexic children were classified according to their nature, being the phonological ones the most frequent, for example: quota by cuota and febbre by febre.…”