Dyslexia and musical notation

The authors examine the difficulties experienced by dyslexic musicians in the formalized study of music, in particular, musical notation. They describe case studies from the literature and from personal interviews they conducted with musicians about their educational histories, musical weaknesses and strengths, and successful compensatory strategies. The authors make instructional suggestions for educators and musicians with dyslexia on how to use multisensory approaches to teach musical notation.     

Dyslexia and spatial thinking

Impairment in spatial thinking has figured prominently as an assumed cause of developmental reading disability. The empirical findings relevant to the idea, with special reference to right-left orientation, visuomotor and visuoconstructive performances, and finger recognition are examined. It is concluded that, although some dyslexic children do show spatial disabilities, there is little evidence to support the existence of a visuospatial type of developmental dyslexia. Presented at the 33rd Annual Conference of The Orton Dyslexia Society, San Diego, California, November 1983.     

Dyslexia and hormone deficiences

From a group of 75 children, originally selected as dyslectic on the basis of their reading and/or spelling problems relative to a total group of 1000 4.th grade children in the city of Trondheim, blood tests were obtained on 35 children. A control group of 45 children was drawn among the 1000 children. Among the 12 different hormones measured, significant differences came out on cortisol, triiodothyronine (T. 3), prolactin, and human growth hormone (HGH, somatotrophin) in boys and girls separately. A follow-up study of 22 dyslectic children from the same cohort gave results consistent with those obtained in the original study. The higher values of the dyslectic group on cortisol and prolactin may suggest the dyslectics to be in a stressful situation, possibly due to their language problems in school. The most striking difference, however, was the very low levels of HGH in the dyslectic group—to the extent that there was little overlap in the two distributions. This result was totally unexpected and is, in fact, opposite of what to be expected on the basis of at least short — time stress events. The results holds up when age and pubery development are controlled for.     

Dyslexia and the life course

The life stories of adults diagnosed with dyslexia as children were examined, with emphasis on the related emotional experiences. The life story method of narrative analysis was used to compare and analyze the accounts of 12 participants who were interviewed extensively. The findings indicated that self-esteem problems may emerge by early childhood as individuals contend with aspects of their learning disabilities that interfere with typical development. By school age, all participants noted self-esteem problems when they experienced struggles or failures in school, which could feel traumatic. Testing and diagnosis improved self-esteem when conducted in a relevant manner that led to adaptation. The central plots of the participants' lives were characterized by the interplay between the functional challenges of their learning disabilities and the related self-esteem issues. Compensation involved the individual's areas of competence and the resources within the environment. Niches in late adolescence and young adulthood held potential to dramatically improve compensation. Participants generally exhibited four ways of life in adulthood and an added sense of emotional insecurity. Each attempted to integrate lifelong emotional experiences related to living with diagnosed dyslexia.     

Dyslexia and oral reading errors

Thomson was the first of very few researchers to have studied oral reading errors as a means of addressing the question: Are dyslexic readers different to other readers? Using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability and Goodman's taxonomy of oral reading errors, Thomson concluded that dyslexic readers are different, but he found that they do not resemble beginning readers. Thomson's study and his use of miscue analysis is re‐evaluated, both in relation to the educational and political climate of the time – which was hostile to the concept of dyslexia – and in the light of research and social developments since then. The study of oral reading still has value today, both for the teacher and the researcher, provided its limitations as a technique are fully appreciated.     

Dyslexia and the double deficit hypothesis

The double deficit hypothesis (Bowers and Wolf 1993) maintains that children with both phonological and naming-speed deficits will be poorer readers than children with just one or neither of these deficits. In the present study, we drew on this hypothesis to help understand why some children have a serious reading impairment. In addition, by adding an orthographic factor, we extended it to a triple deficit hypothesis. Participants were 90 children aged 6 to 10 years. Dyslexic children, whose reading was low for age and for expected level, garden-variety poor readers, reading-level matched younger children, and low verbal IQ good readers, were compared. The dyslexic group was significantly lower then the garden-variety poor readers and the low verbal IQ good readers on most measures, and lower than the younger group on phonological measures. Findings support the double deficit hypothesis of Bowers and Wolf, and also the triple deficit hypothesis. Most of the poorest readers, nearly all of whom qualified as dyslexic, had a double or triple deficit in phonological, naming-speed, and orthographic skills. Conclusions were that dyslexia results from an overload of deficits in skills related to reading, for which the child cannot easily compensate.     

阅读障碍的心理语言学研究简介

阅读障碍是学校教育中教师经常遇到的一个问题，是特殊教育研究的重要领域。本文介绍了阅读障碍的概念、性质和分类，分析了阅读障碍的成因，并探讨了眼动与阅读障碍之间的关系。最后，本文指出了该研究领域存在的问题及我国阅读障碍研究的方向。     

Cognitive Endophenotypes of Dyslexia

The study investigated cognitive deficits associated with dyslexia and familial risk of dyslexia (endophenotypes) by comparing children from families with and without a history of dyslexia. Eighty-eight school-aged children were assessed on measures of phonology, language and rapid automatized naming. A series of regression analyses with family risk and dyslexia status as predictors indicated that word recall, morphology, and rapid automatized naming were associated with the deficit, whereas the two phonological measures (phoneme awareness and nonword repetition) were associated with both literacy deficits and family risk, suggesting that the phonological deficit is an endophenotype of dyslexia. Whereas the association with familial risk was similar for the two phonological measures, they differed in their relation to dyslexia status: Phoneme awareness showed a stronger association with dyslexia than risk status, whereas nonword repetition was more strongly related to the risk. The data are interpreted within the framework of multiple deficit models of dyslexia.     

发展性阅读障碍与早期语音训练

本文从阅读障碍的语音缺陷、语音训练来评述主要以英语为母语的阅读障碍儿童早期语音训练的现状和成果,并在此基础上结合我国汉语阅读障碍的特点,提出在我国开展汉语阅读障碍儿童早期干预的思路。     

Dyslexia assessment in Arabic

Despite advancements in empirical studies of developmental dyslexia, progress on methods of dyslexia assessment have been hampered by ongoing debate concerning diverse issues such as the role and validity of IQ in the assessment process, labelling and definitions ( Miles, 1994 ; Stanovich, 1991, 1992 ). With the emergence of cross-linguistic studies of dyslexia came the realisation that the manifestation of dyslexia is different in different languages ( Goulandris, 2003 ; Smythe, Everatt & Salter, 2004 ). It follows that the assessment of dyslexia should consider specific linguistic features of the language spoken by the individual to be assessed. This paper argues for the need of culture-fair assessment and calls for considerations to be given when assessing monolingual Arabic-speaking individuals with dyslexia which would take into account the specific linguistic feature of the Arabic language.     

Dyslexia: Implications for diagnosis and treatment

Summary I have indicated the relationship between a variety of developmental language problems, speech problems, as well as reading and writing problems. It is important for those working with dyslexic students to recognize the possibility of reinforcement by associating one faulty language skill with other language skills perhaps less poorly developed. In making the diagnosis of dyslexia, which is not always easy, it is well to know the family background. And to illustrate this, I have cited a number of clinical case histories. This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Orton Society at Minneapolis, November, 1978.