Reading Disorders & Connections w/Language Disorders (W4) Flashcards
What is dyslexia? (international dyslexia association definition)
-Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling & decoding abilities. Those difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge
History of language based view of dyslexia (3)
- ~1900: “congenital word blind-ness” - a visual problem
- 1937: reading disorders as a larger set of developmental language disorders but saw that weak cerebral dominance caused reversals
- 1967: first time to discuss phonological processing problems leading to dyslexia (Myklebust & Johnson)
Does RD represent a skewed distribution or the lower end of a normal distribution?
The lower end of a normal distribution (like SLI or lang. disorders) - dimensional disorder
Is there a “fixed” prevalence rate?
No. - It’s arbitrary depending on where the cutoff is for that assessment
What % of 4th grades, 8th grades, and 12th graders read below a basic level?
40% of 4th graders
30% of 8th graders
25% of 12th graders
2 general categories of reading disorders:
- Dyslexia (symptoms limited to reading)
- Other language-based reading problems
4 reading disorders
- Dyslexia
- Specific comprehension deficit (SCD)
- Mixed
- Nonspecified
Characteristics of dyslexia:
- Linguistic comprehension is high (no oral language problem)
- Word recognition is low (poor word rec. due to phonological deficits & subsequent problems decoding)
Characteristics of specific comprehension deficit:
- Linguistic comprehension is LOW (poor oral language abilities)
- Word recognition is high
Characteristics of mixed reading disorders:
- Linguistic comprehension is LOW (poor oral language abilities) AND
- Word recognition is LOW (difficulties decoding)
Characteristics of non-specified reading disorders:
- Linguistic comprehension is HIGH (oral language abilities are fine)
- Word recognition is also high (fine decoders)
- yet they still have a reading disorder
What stage of reading development does dyslexia have the greatest impact?
‘Learning to Read’ - they get better and rate becomes a larger problem later on
Which reading disorder groups have trouble with comprehension?
They all do!
Children with dyslexia have poor ____________ __________ skills AND difficulty ____________ ______-_____ _______________.
Children with dyslexia have poor PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING skills and difficulty ESTABLISHING LETTER-SOUND CORRESPONDENCES (phonics)
*rec. letters & letter knowledge also plays a part
What are parts of phonological processing?
- Phonological awareness (blending phonemes)
- Phonological memory (assess w/digit span & non-word rep – to decode, you need to hold in phono. mem. to get enough to blend)
- Phonological retrieval / rapid automatic naming
When can we identify dyslexia?
-Kindergarten / first grade
When can we identify phonological processing problems?
Earlier than we can ID dyslexia! (may be used for prevention)
What happens to children w/dyslexia, over time?
- On avg. they tend to get better as they rec. more automatically but rate and spelling may continue to be difficult
- They develop less language knowledge overtime as they avoid reading (depending on severity/resolve)
Specific comprehension deficit is AKA (2)
- Hyperlexic (implies above avg. word decoding, which isn’t necessarily true)
- Poor comprehension
Specific comprehension deficits (strengths/weaknesses)
- Read fluently & accurately
- But don’t comprehend well (difficulty ‘making sense’ of words, sentences, discourse that they’re reading)
- May or may not have previous diagnosis of LI
Mixed reading disorders
-Share characteristics of BOTh dyslexic and SCD groups
What language skills are likely to be weak with kids with mixed reading disorders?
-Essentially all of them. (phonological processing, vocab, syntactic processing, discourse processing)
What is another way to categorize RD?
According to time of ID
If RD is ID’ed in ~grade K-3 it is considered…
Early-emerging RD - most likely dyslexia
If RD is ID’ed ~grade 4+ it is considered…
Late-emerging RD
Two potential causes of late-emerging RD are:
- They can’t read to learn (SCD - weak linguistic comp.)
- Had word rec. problems but good visual memory so they previously squeaked by.
Describe the shift in reading disorders over time.
Dyslexia starts out with a greater prevalence but word recognition improves over time so the number drops while mixed/SCD numbers get bigger over time as comprehension becomes more important and passages get harder.
