Contributions of phonological awareness,phonological short-term memory,and rapid automated naming,toward decoding ability in students with mild intellectual disability

Reading decoding ability is a fundamental skill to acquire word-specific orthographic information necessary for skilled reading. Decoding ability and its underlying phonological processing skills have been heavily investigated typically among developing students. However, the issue has rarely been noticed among students with intellectual disability who commonly suffer from reading decoding problems. This study is aimed at determining the contributions of phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, and rapid automated naming, as three well known phonological processing skills, to decoding ability among 60 participants with mild intellectual disability of unspecified origin ranging from 15 to 23 years old. The results of the correlation analysis revealed that all three aspects of phonological processing are significantly correlated with decoding ability. Furthermore, a series of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that after controlling the effect of IQ, phonological awareness, and rapid automated naming are two distinct sources of decoding ability, but phonological short-term memory significantly contributes to decoding ability under the realm of phonological awareness.     

Effects of targeted reading instruction on phonological awareness and phonic decoding in children with down syndrome

This research evaluated the effectiveness of reading instruction targeting oral reading and phonological awareness for children with Down syndrome (affecting chromosome 21). The participants were 7 children ranging in age from 2 years, 11 months to 10 years, 8 months. Each child acted as his/her own control, with assessments of language, cognition, phonological awareness, word and short-passage comprehension, and oral reading ability conducted on four occasions (initially, preintervention, postintervention and delayed postintervention) over approximately a 12-month period. The intervention was conducted over 10 weekly sessions and involved individual instruction. The postintervention assessment results provided evidence that phonic reading instruction was generally effective in improving reading skills and phonological awareness of children with Down syndrome.     

Reading impairment and visual processing deficits in schizophrenia

Individuals with schizophrenia show magnocellular visual pathway abnormalities similar to those described in dyslexia, predicting that reading disturbance should be a common concomitant of schizophrenia. To date, however, reading deficits have not been well established, and, in fact, reading is often thought to be normal in schizophrenia based upon results of tests such as the WRAT, which evaluate single word reading. This study evaluated "real world" reading ability in schizophrenia, relative to functioning of the magnocellular visual pathway. Standardized psychoeducational reading tests and contrast sensitivity measures were administered to 19 patients and 10 controls. Analyses of between group differences were further refined by classification of participants into reading vs. non-reading impaired groups using a priori and derived theoretical models. Patients with schizophrenia, as a group, showed highly significant impairments in reading (p<0.04-p<0.001), with particular deficits on tests of rate, comprehension and phonological awareness. Between 21% and 63% of patients met criteria for dyslexia depending upon diagnostic model vs. 0-20% of the controls. The degree of deficit correlated significantly with independent measures of magnocellular dysfunction. Reading impairment in schizophrenia reaches the level of dyslexia and is associated with compromised magnocellular processing as hypothesized. Findings related to symptoms, functioning and recommendations for reading ability assessment are discussed.     

Training phonological awareness skills in children with Down syndrome

Increasingly, children with Down syndrome receive literacy instruction based on a phonological awareness philosophy with the expectation of acquiring functional reading skills. Previous research demonstrates that a phonological awareness based reading programme delivers excellent results in terms of literacy acquisition and improvements in speech production for children with speech and language delays. Unfortunately, little research exists to support the effectiveness of this approach for children with Down syndrome. The current research study examined using a phonological awareness based intervention programme with three children with Down syndrome (aged 7;2, 8;4, and 8;10). A multiple baseline across behaviours design was selected. The intervention programme focused on the key skills of alliteration detection, phoneme isolation, spelling of orthographically regular words and rhyme detection. Two tasks (comprehension of passive structures and spatial structures) were selected as control behaviours. Phoneme segmentation and speech intelligibility were selected to investigate generalisation of intervention targets to other related skill areas. The results indicated that the participants improved the phonological awareness skills targeted in the intervention programme. Unfortunately, no generalisation to other areas of phonological awareness was noted. In summary, the results indicate that children with Down syndrome can benefit from a phonological awareness based approach to literacy.     

Reading skills and phonological awareness acquisition in Down syndrome

Background Although reading abilities play a fundamental role in the acquisition of personal autonomy, up until now studies investigating these abilities in Down syndrome (DS) are aimed at defining educational or rehability acquisition. However, studies describing the relationship between reading and phonological awareness in individuals with DS by comparing them to typically developing children often report contradictory results. The aim of this study is to explore reading and phonological awareness skills in a group of participants with DS. Methods We administered reading and phonological processing ability tests to 17 DS individuals and to 17 reading‐age‐matched typically developing children. Results Concerning reading abilities, participants with DS were impaired on non‐word reading and on interpreting accuracy of non‐homographic homophones. Their passage comprehension was also limited. Comparable ability was reported in the two groups on irregular word reading and passage reading tasks. Regarding phonological awareness ability, individuals with DS showed lower performances on several tasks, such as rhyming, deletion and syllable segmentation. Conclusions People with DS show particular failure on non‐word reading, a task where correct decoding is only partially influenced by lexical access or semantic context. Correct non‐word reading mainly requires the use of the grapheme–phoneme conversion process. This process is based on the efficiency of phonological awareness abilities, which are partly impaired in people with DS. The rehabilitative implications of these findings are discussed.     

Anomic alexia of kanji in a patient with anomic aphasia

The ability to read aloud kanji (logogram) words and to comprehend their meaning was systematically examined to clarify the underlying mechanism of kanji alexia in a patient with anomic aphasia. Confrontation naming, reading aloud and reading comprehension tasks were performed using 110 words from 11 semantic categories written in kanji or kana. Performance in oral reading of kanji words was significantly worse than oral reading of the same words transcribed into kana words. In addition, for kanji words reading aloud was much worse than reading comprehension. Oral reading of kanji words had a significant correlation with naming pictures corresponding to the words, but no correlation with comprehension of kanji words. Qualitative analyses demonstrated that errors in oral reading and naming tasks had many features in common. Our results indicated that some common mechanisms underlie both naming and oral reading of kanji words. We propose calling this type of alexia "anomic alexia of kanji", which should be distinguished from kanji alexia with difficulty in both reading aloud and comprehension. Lesions in our patient were located in the middle part of the left middle temporal gyrus and its subcortical area, which could be important for access to the phonological lexicon from semantics.     

Diagnostic profiles of children with developmental dyslexia in a transparent orthography

In the present study for 108 typical and 122 atypical Dutch readers in second grade, the accuracy and speed of decoding words and pseudowords, as well as the accuracy of spelling words were assessed along with four types of phonological precursor measures: rapid naming, verbal working memory, phoneme awareness and letter knowledge. The data show that the group being diagnosed as poor readers were significantly behind in all reading and spelling measures. It was also found that the criterion measures of reading and spelling explained already two third of the variance associated with the group distinction. Finally, we found word and pseudoword efficiency in the typical group to be explained by phonological awareness (spoonerism) and rapid naming of letters, word and pseudoword accuracy by phonological awareness, and spelling by phonological awareness and letter dictation. In the group of poor readers, a much greater variety of precursor measures was involved in explaining the variance in reading and spelling abilities.     

Word reading and reading-related skills in Hebrew-speaking adolescents with Williams syndrome

This study investigated word reading and reading-related skills in 17 Hebrew-speaking individuals with Williams syndrome, ages 11-22. Reading of real words was at the third grade level, yet six participants could not read nonce words at all. The relatively high percentage of nonreaders could be a consequence of the special characteristics of Hebrew orthography, which realizes consonants as letters and vowels as diacritic dots and dashes below and above the line. In the group as a whole, reading real and nonce words did not correlate with rapid naming. Yet, contrary to research on dyslexia, word reading correlated with IQ as well as with performance on phonological awareness tasks.     

Word Reading and Reading-Related Skills in Hebrew- Speaking Adolescents with Williams Syndrome

Abstract

This study investigated word reading and reading-related skills in 17 Hebrew-speaking individuals with Williams syndrome, ages 11–22. Reading of real words was at the third grade level, yet six participants could not read nonce words at all. The relatively high percentage of nonreaders could be a consequence of the special characteristics of Hebrew orthography, which realizes consonants as letters and vowels as diacritic dots and dashes below and above the line. In the group as a whole, reading real and nonce words did not correlate with rapid naming. Yet, contrary to research on dyslexia, word reading correlated with IQ as well as with performance on phonological awareness tasks.     

Phonological awareness and rapid naming predict word attack and word identification in adults with mild mental retardation

In this study we asked whether measures of phonological awareness and rapid naming were correlated with single-word reading skills of 30 adults with mild mental retardation. We presented four tests of phonological awareness (for rime, first, middle, and end-sound categorization), two rapid-naming tests (pictures and letters), and the Woodcock Word-Identification and Word-Attack subtests. All four phonological-awareness measures and both rapid-naming measures were significantly correlated with both word-attack and word-identification skills. This outcome is consistent with findings from typically developing children, suggesting that instruction in phonological awareness would facilitate the acquisition of word-attack skills in individuals with mental retardation.     

Phonological reading skills acquisition by children with mental retardation

Twenty children with mental retardation (MR), age 7-12, completed a phonological reading skills program over approximately 10 weeks. As a result of the instruction, they were better able to sound out learned and transfer words compared to a control group matched on age, IQ, nonword reading, language comprehension, and phonemic awareness. Final sounding out was predicted by beginning reading skill in both groups, by phonemic awareness and articulation speed in the control group only, and by general language ability in the instruction group only. Neither IQ nor verbal working memory correlated significantly with final sounding out ability in either group. It is suggested that the instruction succeeded in compensating for weaknesses in phonemic awareness and speech articulation, but favored those who had better language skills.     

Distinguishing semantic and lexical word retrieval deficits in people with aphasia

Background: Identifying the point of breakdown in people with aphasia with disorders of word retrieval is not straightforward. Evidence has been sought from: (i) the nature of the errors in naming; (ii) the variables affecting naming accuracy; (iii) the effects of correct and misleading cues; (iv) performance in other word comprehension and production tasks. However, previous research has demonstrated that each of these sources of evidence provides information compatible with more than level of breakdown. Aims: The study investigates whether a combination of information from these sources can provide a coherent account of how word retrieval is breaking down in people with aphasia. Methods & Procedures: Three people with aphasia (JGr, LM, and KS) took part in four experiments. The first investigated the errors made in picture naming and the factors (target word length, imageability, frequency …) affecting naming accuracy. The second experiment investigated the effects of correct phonemic cues and miscues on word retrieval. The third examined the participants' performance in tests of spoken and written word and picture comprehension. The fourth experiment investigated whether the participants had the processing abilities necessary to generate their own phonemic cues in spoken naming from orthographic information. Outcomes & Results: Evidence from these investigations showed different levels of breakdown in the three participants. JGr's naming was characterised by semantic errors, effects of target imageability and familiarity on naming accuracy, improved naming with correct phonemic cues and semantic errors with miscues, and poor performance in word comprehension tasks. This pattern is consistent with a breakdown at a semantic level underlying JGr's difficulty in word retrieval. In contrast, LM shows performance indicating a breakdown in mapping between intact semantic and phonological representations. He makes primarily no response errors in naming and his accuracy is affected only by frequency and familiarity. Correct phonemic cues can improve his naming accuracy to near normal levels, and he makes no semantic errors, although he is slowed by miscues. His word and picture comprehension is intact. KS shows a more complex pattern of impairment. Like JGr, she shows evidence of a semantic impairment: she makes semantic errors in naming, and her accuracy is affected by target imageability. She makes errors in word comprehension and her word retrieval is adversely affected by miscues. There are two unusual features to her performance: her naming accuracy is not improved by initial phoneme cues (despite effects of miscues and more extensive phonemic cues), and she is better at naming pictures with longer names (a “reverse length effect”). Investigations in experiment four show that KS is using orthographic information on the initial letter of names to generate her own phonemic cues; it is concluded that in addition to her semantic deficit she has an impairment in access to lexical phonological representations. Conclusions: We conclude that careful investigation of the performance of people with aphasia across a range of tasks can be used to identify underlying levels of breakdown in word retrieval. However, superficial resemblances between people with aphasia can be misleading.     

The interaction of lexical and non-lexical processing mechanisms: evidence from anomia

Patient SF presented with a selective deficit in naming, in the presence of normal auditory, visual and pictorial input processing, and of normal comprehension. The naming disorder was independent of input modality, and resulted in the inability to respond to low-frequency items. The analysis of the patient's performance in the repeated administration of the same set of pictures for oral naming and for written naming demonstrated that both tasks were disrupted to a similar extent--high consistency values were observed both across and within modality. Thus, the profile of the naming disorder observed in this patient was consistent with damage to phonological and orthographic output lexicons. SF's performance in reading and writing was apparently at odds with this account, as he was able to read aloud words with lexically-assigned stress, and to write to dictation words whose spelling is also determined lexically. The co-occurrence of the inability to activate output lexical representations in both oral and written picture naming, in the context of normal ability to activate the same representations in reading and in writing is consistent with the notion that phonological and orthographic output lexicons are distinct, but interact with nonlexical conversion mechanisms.     

Transcortical sensory aphasia: Dissociation between naming and comprehension

Abstract

Although anomia in transcortical sensory aphasia (TSA) is usually described as a semantically based deficit (naming and recognition are equally affected), dissociations in naming performance have occasionally been reported. We report a two-part study: in Study 1 the pattern of preserved and impaired language abilities was examined in five patients with TSA and intact object naming; in Study 2 the neural mechanism(s) underlying preserved visual confrontation naming in TSA was examined. Demographic factors, severity of language deficits, lesion volume and location, and cerebral asymmetries of patients with TSA and intact naming (TSA-intact) (n = 6) were compared with those of patients with TSA and impaired naming (TSA-impaired) (n = 6), anomic aphasia (Anomia) (n = 6), and left hemisphere damage without aphasia (Control). The results of Study 1 revealed that all five patients had a relative preservation of oral production (spontaneous speech, repetition, naming and reading aloud), but impaired auditory and written (sentence-level) comprehension. Object/picture naming was significantly better than auditory comprehension of the same targets, and naming was also preserved in tactile and auditory (verbal definitions and non-verbal sounds) modalites, but written naming was impaired. In four patients oral reading showed a pattern of phonological dyslexia. The results of Study 2 failed to demonstrate significant differences between the groups with preserved naming (TSA-intact and control) and those with impaired naming (TSA-impaired and anomia) in non-language variables that might explain the selective preservation or impairment of naming. These results are discussed in terms of the functional and anatomical independence of the neural systems responsible for object naming and comprehension.     

Reading ability and phonological awareness in Japanese children with dyslexia

In alphabetic languages, the deficit of the phonological awareness is considered as the core deficit in developmental dyslexia. However, the role of phonological awareness in the acquisition of reading Japanese kana, the transparent, mora-based phonogram, has not been understood completely. We examine the abilities of Japanese dyslexic children on different types of Japanese phonological tasks, and discussed which tasks significantly account for each aspect of reading ability. METHODS: Fifteen dyslexic children (9.53+/-1.52 years old), and 15 children with normal reading ability (9.17+/-0.90 years old) participated in this study. They performed three types of phonological awareness tasks. The mora counting task and the mora reversal task of words require phonological awareness at the mora level. The letter rhyming task, which resembles the task in English language, requires phonological awareness at the phoneme level. We evaluated the reading ability by the reading speed, the reading errors, and the number of pauses while reading sentences aloud. RESULTS: The task performances of the dyslexic group on all three phonological awareness tasks were significantly lower than those of the control group. Stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that the mora counting task and the rhyming letter task most significantly explained the reading speed and number of reading pauses. The mora reversal task of words, together with the antegraded digit span, significantly explained the reading errors. CONCLUSIONS: Japanese dyslexics showed deficits of phonological awareness both at the mora and the phoneme levels. Phonological awareness must be crucial for acquiring the ability of decoding phonograms, including Japanese kana.     

Learner-generated drawing for phonological and orthographic dyslexic readers

This study presents an examination of learner-generated drawing for different reading comprehension subtypes of dyslexic students and control students. The participants were 22 phonological dyslexic students, 20 orthographic dyslexic students, 21 double-deficit dyslexic students, and 45 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched control students. The major evaluation tools included word recognition task, orthographic task, phonological awareness task, and scenery texts and questions. Comparisons of the four groups of students showed differences among phonological dyslexia, orthographic dyslexia, double-deficit dyslexia, and the chronological age control groups in pre- and posttest performance of scenery texts. Differences also existed in relevant questions and the effect of the learner-generated drawing method. The pretest performance showed problems in the dyslexic samples in reading the scenery texts and answering relevant questions. The posttest performance revealed certain differences among phonological dyslexia, orthographic dyslexia, double-deficit dyslexia, and the chronological age control group. Finally, all dyslexic groups obtained a great effect from using the learner-generated drawing, particularly orthographic dyslexia. These results suggest that the learner-generated drawing was also useful for dyslexic students, with the potential for use in the classroom for teaching text reading to dyslexic students.     

Sparing of country names in the context of phonological impairment

Many single case studies have reported selective impairment of proper or common names in anomic speakers, providing evidence for a categorical organisation of the lexical-semantic network. These dissociations have been observed in oral and/or written naming and sometimes in comprehension. Here we report the case of an aphasic patient with severely impaired phonological encoding presenting a dissociation between proper and common names. Superior production of countries and nationalities was observed in all output tasks (naming, reading and repetition). The interest of a preservation of proper name categories in the context of phonological impairment lies in the question of the propagation of categorical organisation to the processes of phonological encoding. We suggest that the observed dissociation can be explained by relative sparing of countries and nationalities at lexical-semantic level as in previous reported cases and that this organisation spreads beyond lexical selection, to phonological encoding.     

Specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia: What are the boundaries? Data from Greek children

This study examines the significance (between-groups comparisons) and frequency (within-group analyses) of deficits in developmental dyslexia (DD, mainly deficits in decoding and phonemic awareness), specific language impairment (SLI, mainly deficits in listening comprehension), or both (mainly deficits in phonological short-term memory [STM]). Participants included two groups of children who had received a diagnosis of either SLI (N = 15) or DD (N = 15). For the between-groups comparison, the groups were matched pairwise on nonverbal IQ to 30 chronological age controls (CAC) and 30 reading level controls (RLC). For the within-group analyses, the participants were compared to 91 CACs and 63 RLCs. We developed tasks not used for the diagnoses to assess phonological skills (decoding, phonemic awareness, phonological STM) and non-phonological skills (listening and reading comprehension). SLI children scored lower than both DD children and RLCs on tasks assessing listening and reading comprehension, and lower than RLCs on phonological STM and phonemic awareness. Within-group comparisons showed that a higher proportion of SLI than DD children presented severe deficits in the same four domains. The opposite pattern was found for decoding skills (7 SLI children with a severe deficit, versus 13 in the DD group). These findings are discussed in the light of models explaining the overlap between SLI and DD. They highlight the need to assess both phonological and non-phonological skills in SLI and DD children, using both between- and within-groups designs.     

Do people with schizophrenia comprehend what they read?

Although people with schizophrenia appear to be able to read aloud, their reading comprehension has been little tested. This study asks, Do people with schizophrenia have deficits in reading comprehension compared with well controls and, if so, what are the type and severity of those deficits? The reading comprehension of 30 people with chronic schizophrenia was compared with a group of 30 people without a psychiatric diagnosis. The groups were matched for sex and age and had similar intelligence scores. The Reading Comprehension Battery for Aphasia (RCBA) was used to obtain a profile of reading comprehension skills, and intelligence was estimated using the National Adult Reading Test. Schizophrenia subjects took significantly longer to complete the RCBA and obtained significantly poorer scores than did controls on the RCBA total and on all but one RCBA subtest. Although these findings could have serious implications for the presentation of written material such as consent and information forms, further research is needed to determine how these deficits impact on functional reading and whether or not they can be addressed.