What can spelling errors tell us about the causes and treatment of dyslexia?

• Autores: V. Giannouli, G. T. Pavlidis
• Localización: Support for learning, ISSN 0268-2141, Vol. 29, Nº. 3, 2014, págs. 244-260
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Until recently the majority of research undertaken into dyslexia focused on English-speaking dyslexics, who tend to make significantly more phonological than visual errors. This led to a major assumption about the possible cause of dyslexia being a lack of phonological awareness. According to the phonological deficit theory, the level of phonological consistency of a language determines not only the reading speed but also the amount and types of reading and spelling errors made by dyslexic people. This theory has been seriously challenged by the results of a number of studies in more phonologically consistent languages, such as Greek, Italian and Japanese, where morphology seemed to play a more crucial role than the phonological structure of a language per se. The 116 dyslexic people who took part in this experiment were matched on age, sex, IQ and psycho-educational performance. A total of 58 US English-speaking dyslexic people were compared to 58 Greek dyslexic people. Both groups met the diagnostic criteria. Results demonstrated that Greek dyslexics were found to make significantly fewer phonological errors (11.0%) than the US dyslexics (85.5%, p < .000), but comparatively more visual (66.8% to US 14.0%, P < .000) and grammatical errors (22.2% to US 0.1%, p < .000) than their English-speaking counterparts. These data showed highly significant quantitative and qualitative spelling differences. Greek dyslexics could be accurately differentiated from the US English dyslexics based on the three types of spelling errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]