Word Learning Deficits in Children With Dyslexia

Abstract

dPurpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate word learning in children with dyslexia to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses during the configuration stage of word learning. Method: Children with typical development (N = 116) and dyslexia (N = 68) participated in computer-based word learning games that assessed word learning in 4 sets of games that manipulated phonological or visuospatial demands. All children were monolingual English-speaking 2nd graders without oral language impairment. The word learning games measured children's ability to link novel names with novel objects, to make decisions about the accuracy of those names and objects, to recognize the semantic features of the objects, and to produce the names of the novel words.Accuracy data were analyzed using analyses of covariance with nonverbal intelligence scores as a covariate. Results: Word learning deficits were evident for children with dyslexia across every type of manipulation and on 3 of 5 tasks, but not for every combination of task/ manipulation. Deficits were more common when task demands taxed phonology. Visuospatial manipulations led to both disadvantages and advantages for children with dyslexia. Conclusion: Children with dyslexia evidence spoken word learning deficits, but their performance is highly dependent on manipulations and task demand, suggesting a processing trade-off between visuospatial and phonological demands.

Novel word learning deficits in infants at family risk for dyslexia

“…Although fast-mapping ability relies heavily on speech perception and lexical skills (Werker et al, 1998), it is a complex task that requires children to attend to the auditory and visual stimuli, establish associations between them, store them in short-term memory, and retrieve these associations at test. Hence, in addition to speech perception and phonological abilities, it is plausible that other deficits identified in individuals with dyslexia may account for or at least contribute to AR infants' diminished performance in this task, including difficulties with selective attention, visuospatial processing, and associative learning (Alt et al, 2017). It is not possible to discard all these possibilities based on our findings, as we did not include an associative learning control task.…”

“…The key evidence is that dyslexic children are successful at learning visual-visual and verbal-visual associations, but that they perform worse than same-age controls and younger controls in tasks in which they must retrieve newly learned labels for production Litt et al, 2013;Thomson & Goswami, 2010). Further support for this explanation comes from evidence that children's difficulties in word-learning tasks are further exacerbated if the task involves multisyllabic lexical items (Alt et al, 2017) or items that are stored in high-density lexical neighbourhoods (Thomson & Goswami, 2010), both of which increase the phonological learning load. Further support for this explanation comes from evidence that children's difficulties in word-learning tasks are further exacerbated if the task involves multisyllabic lexical items (Alt et al, 2017) or items that are stored in high-density lexical neighbourhoods (Thomson & Goswami, 2010), both of which increase the phonological learning load.…”

“…The fact that children's difficulty is restricted to visual-verbal PAL points to a lack of specificity in developing novel phonological representations rather than a general learning deficit. Further support for this explanation comes from evidence that children's difficulties in word-learning tasks are further exacerbated if the task involves multisyllabic lexical items (Alt et al, 2017) or items that are stored in high-density lexical neighbourhoods (Thomson & Goswami, 2010), both of which increase the phonological learning load.…”

Exploring the Overlap Between Dyslexia and Speech Sound Production Deficits

“…For example, a "semantic" representation provides meaning of the word in the lexicon (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). For children with dyslexia, the creation of phonological representations appears to be disrupted (Alt et al, 2017;Brady et al, 1983;Melby-Lervåg & Lervåg, 2012;Swan & Goswami, 1997). As children acquire new words, they must rely on phonological working memory to create, retain, and retrieve a phonological code that is not yet associated with a semantic representation.…”

The Challenges Facing Arab Students with Learning Disabilities in Higher Education Institutions and the Role of Support Centers in Their Academic Functioning: A Preliminary Study

“…Nowadays, 21 different types of dyslexia are known, each caused by a disability at a different stage of the reading process, causing different types of errors and reading difficulties (Friedmann & Coltheart, 2016). In most cases dyslexia has also been found to result in difficulties in acquiring spoken language, reading and spelling accompanied by errors in letter identification and clarification (Alt et al, 2017).…”