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Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability? Continued from page 8.Previous|NextThe number of poor readers (standard score =85) in the two groups was also examined. Chi square tests were carried out to compare the groups. Results were: Word reading VO group: n = 37 (61.7%); NVO group: n = 32 (21.8%). Chi square (df 1) = 30.53, p =.001 Reading comprehension VO group: n = 30 (50.8%), NVO group: n = 27 (19.0%) Chi square (df 1) = 20.80, p = .001 Nonword reading VO group: n = 28 (46.7%), NVO group: n = 36 (24.5%) Chi square (df 1) = 9.80, p = .005 The VO group was approximately one standard deviation below the normative mean on each reading measure and 8 to 10 points below the NVO group. There were also significantly more poor readers in the VO group. The VO group`s lower score on the phonological awareness measure strongly suggests that their poor reading could be due, at least in part, to a phonological awareness deficit. However, the group continued to be significantly lower than the NVO group on all reading measures when the difference in phonological awareness was statistically controlled. DISCUSSION This study investigated whether the ability to distinguish between correctly and incorrectly oriented upper case letters and numerals would contribute independent variance to reading after controlling for the contributions of reading-related constructs (phonological awareness, naming speed). It also investigated whether children with a deficit on the orientation measure (Jordan, 1980) would be more impaired readers than similar children without this deficit. The letter and numeral orientation measure is referred to in this study as a "visual-orthographic" task, and children who were low on the task are described as having a "visual-orthographic" deficit. The stimuli of the orientation task are undeniably visual and it is doubtful that naming the stimuli would improve accuracy of response. The measure is referred to as orthographic on the grounds that letters and numerals are the basic raw materials of the orthography. As defined by Wagner and Barker (1994, p. 245), "Orthographic processing refers to making use of orthographic information when processing written or oral language. An orthography refers to the system of marks that make up a printed language." These authors add that, in English, the orthography includes upper and lower case letters, numerals, and punctuation marks. DOES ABILITY TO DETECT LETTER AND NUMERAL ORIENTATION ERRORS CONTRIBUTE INDEPENDENT VARIANCE TO READING? Hierarchical regression analyses were carried out to answer the question whether the visual-orthographic measure (detection of letter and numeral orientation errors) would contribute independent variance to reading after accounting for the contributions of phonological awareness and naming speed. Age, verbal IQ, and verbal short-term memory were entered first into each analysis to control for the effects of these variables on reading. It was found that, after controlling for the contributions of the three variables listed above, the visual-orthographic measure accounted for significant independent variance in each reading measure, and for more variance in reading comprehension than phonological awareness or naming speed (table III). It is hypothesized that the higher contribution to reading comprehension is due to the greater demands for efficient and automatic visual-orthographic processing when the stimuli are sequences of words rather than single words. There is little time for slow phonological decoding, if meaning is to be obtained, and children who have difficulty differentiating single letters accurately are likely to make errors differentiating between orthographically similar words in the text. In the hierarchical regression analyses, phonological awareness contributed far more to nonword reading than visual-orthographic skills or naming speed (table III). Naming speed, however, accounted for more variance in word reading than phonological awareness or visual-orthographic skills. Reading-Related Behavioral Characteristics of Chinese Children with Dyslexia: The Use of the Teachers` Behavior Checklist in Hong Kong Annals of Dyslexia , 2003 by Chan, David W, Ho, Connie Suk-Han, Tsang, Suk-Man, Lee, Suk-Han, Chung, Kevin K HPrimary school teachers rated the frequency of occurrence of 65 reading-related behavioral characteristics of Grade 1 to Grade 6 Chinese school children in Hong Kong. An item factor analysis based on ratings on 554 students yielded two major dimensions of behavioral characteristics on reading and writing problems, and sequencing and spatial difficulties. In predicting the literacy and cognitive skills of a separate sample of 184 school children, gender, age, and the two empirical scales developed on the basis of factor analysis were used as predictors in regression analyses. The findings indicated that reading and writing problems emerged as the most predominant predictor of various literacy and cognitive deficits. The two mean scores of behavioral characteristics for children with dyslexia were significantly elevated as compared with those for children without dyslexia. Implications of the findings for screening dyslexia and predicting specific cognitive deficits using classroom-based behavior checklists are discussed. Advances in genetics, and neurobiological and psychological research on developmental dyslexia in past decades have led to a greater understanding of the once hidden disability, although how best to define and assess dyslexia, and to provide effective and appropriate interventions to children with dyslexia, remain controversial (see Miles & Miles, 1999; Snowling, 2000). Throughout the years, research efforts aimed to understand comprehensively the basis of dyslexia have been directed at both the neurological and the cognitive levels. At the neurological level, researchers have generally concentrated their efforts on certain brain regions or systems, and made connections between dysfunctions of neuroanatomical sites and cognitive deficits in children with dyslexia (see Best & Demb, 1999; Nicolson, Fawcett, Berry, Jenkins, Dean, & Brooks, 1999; Vidyasagar & Pammer, 1999). At the cognitive level, researchers have conducted studies to explore the causal links between cognitive skills and written language abili ties. Their findings generally indicate that phonological processing deficit constitutes a core deficit that underlies the failure to acquire adequate word recognition skills among readers with dyslexia in languages with alphabetic scripts (see Snowling, 2000; Stanovich, 1988). In addition, slow naming speed, which may indicate the disruption of the automatic processes involved in extracting orthographic patterns, could represent a second core deficit in dyslexia (see Bowers & Wolf, 1993; McBride-Chang & Manis, 1996; Wolf & Bowers, 1999). Apart from phonological and naming-speed deficits (the double-deficit hypothesis), research evidence also suggests that orthographic skills or the visual processing of orthographic information such as letter sequences and spatial position patterns in words could be another independent factor contributing to word recognition (see Badian, 1997; Bowers & Wolf, 1993; Corcos & Willows, 1993). Accordingly, readers with dyslexia might be impaired in different ways. Nonetheless, the delineation of different cognitive deficits has implications for the assessment of dyslexia and ultimately, the provision of appropriate interventions to children with different cognitive deficits. Over the years, many tests of dyslexia based on positive indicators of dyslexia have been developed and used (see Reid, 1998). Some tests, such as the Aston Index (Newton & Thomson, 1976) and the Bangor Dyslexia Test (Miles, 1997), are basic fact-finders without any major commitment to any one cognitive hypothesis. Other tests are based on the hypothesis that children with dyslexia have deficits at the phonological level, such as the Phonological Assessment Battery (Frederickson, Frith, & Reason, 1997) and the Computerized Cognitive Profiling System (Singleton, Thomas, & Leedale, 1996/1997), or deficits in verbal short-term memory, such as The Children`s Test of Nonword Repetition (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1996), or dysfunctions of the cerebellum in addition to phonological deficits, such as the Dyslexia Early Screening Test (Nicolson & Fawcett, 1994) and the Dyslexia Screening Test (Fawcett & Nicolson, 1997). Still, there are checklists or rating scales of behavioral characteristics developed for use by tea chers and educational professionals in school or classroom settings to identify students at risk for specific learning difficulties. Most of these checklists, such as the Myklebust Pupil Rating Scale (see Margolis, Sheridan, & Lemanowicz, 1981) and the Windward Rating Scale (see Hamada & Tomikawa, 1986), are rather broadband and are aimed to screen for students with general learning difficulties. In contrast, very few specific screening tools for dyslexia based on reading-related behavioral characteristics have been developed. A notable example is the Dyslexia Screening Instrument (Coon, Waguespack, & Polk, 1994), which consists of 33 statements to screen students who exhibit behaviors related to reading, spelling, writing, or language processing difficulties. Speed reading index
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