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Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability?Continued from page 11.Previous|Next Although many children`s poor performance on a letter naming speed test may be determined by one or more of the higher processes discussed by Bowers and Ishaik (2003), the present study suggests that some poor readers` difficulty in recognizing letters is determined not by slow name recall, but, at an earlier stage, by problems in visual-orthographic memory for letter patterns. The orientation of individual letters is a major factor in letter pattern recognition. A child who has problems with recognition of the correct orientation of letters is likely to be a slow and inaccurate reader of both words and nonwords due to a problem in acquiring accurate and stable orthographic representations of words. CONCLUSIONS In summary, this study found that, even with stringent controls for other variables associated with reading, recognition of letter/numeral orientation errors made unique contributions to reading. The study also found that children with a deficit in recognition of letter/numeral orientation errors were poorer readers than those without a deficit. It must be stressed, however, that the results are based on a school referred sample, which may not be representative of the general child population. The ethnic makeup of the sample (94% white) may also differ from that found in many communities. In spite of the significant roles of phonological awareness and naming speed in reading development, these two variables leave a considerable proportion of the variance in reading unexplained, which leads to the logical hypothesis that other, unspecified, variables are contributing additional variance to reading. Basic visual-orthographic skills such as the accurate recognition of letter orientation may be among those variables. There is no doubt that higher level orthographic skills (e.g., Olson, Forsberg, & Wise, 1994) account for significant variance in reading. This study indicates that there are some children whose reading development continues to be hampered by a problem in orthographic memory for the orientation of letters (and numerals) long after most children have easily mastered this task. The problems of such children require special attention, but may be overlooked, especially if, as is frequently the case, they also have naming speed and/or phonological awareness deficits. As recommended many years ago by Willows and Terepocki (1993), more research on the phenomenon of letter reversals is needed, especially when it occurs in children beyond first grade. References Adams, M. J.,& Brack, M. (1993). Word recognition: The interface of educational policies and scientific research. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5, 113-139. Badian, N. A. (1993a). Phonemic awareness, visual symbol processing, and reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5, 87-100. Badian, N. A. (1993b). Predicting reading progress in children receiving special help. Annals of Dyslexia, 43, 90-109. Badian, N. A. (1994). Do dyslexic and other poor readers differ in reading-related cognitive skills? Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 6, 45-63. Does a Visual-Orthographic Deficit Contribute to Reading Disability? Annals of Dyslexia , Jun 2005 by Badian, Nathlie A Continued from page 6.Previous|NextRESULTS Means, standard deviations, and ranges for all variables are given in table I for the total sample. There was no overall gender difference on a MANOVA that included all variables: F(1,196) = 1.55, p .116, and, therefore, gender was not a factor in any analysis. The three IQ means were close to the normative population mean of 100, but mean reading standard scores were seven to nine points lower. Mean phonological awareness, visual-orthographic, and verbal short-term memory scores were below the normative means, though not significantly. The mean time taken for naming speed (RAN Letters: 36.3 seconds) was more than one standard deviation greater than expected for age 9 years on the Denckla and Rudel (1974) norms, but not on the recent norms (Wolf & Denckla, 2005). Although the age range was fairly restricted, there was a wide range in scores for most of the variables, including those standardized by age, probably reflecting the heterogeneity of the referred sample. There was a possible ceiling effect on the phonological awareness task (phoneme deletion). On the 13-item test, approximately one-fourth of the sample (n = 53, 25.6%) obtained scores of 12 or 13, which was more than one standard deviation above the sample mean. On the other hand, a substantial proportion of the participants found the task difficult with 21.3% (n = 44) scoring more than one standard deviation below the mean. As the visual-orthographic measure was the marker task, it should be noted that there was considerable variation in error scores on this task, with a range from 0 to 11 and a standard deviation approximately as large as the mean score. The same percentage of children (22.2%) scored approximately one standard deviation above and below the mean error score. Ten children (4.8%) made seven or more errors (more than 2 standard deviations above the mean).These children tended to be slightly younger (M = 8.6 years) than the sample mean and were exceptionally poor readers (Word Reading: M = 74.8, SD = 9.8). Verbal IQ was also two points lower than the sample mean. These 10 children also had deficits in naming speed and/or phonological awareness. It is possible that inattention may contribute to lower scores on the visual-orthographic task. Unfortunately, no measure of attention was included in the study. As a rough indication, however, the 35 children whose primary referral was for ADHD, or for whom ADHD was a major contributing factor, were compared with the rest of the sample on the visual-orthographic measure. Mean error scores did not differ: ADHD group, M = 2.29 (SD = 1.8), non-ADHD group, M = 2.28 (SD = 2.3) (F[1,205] - 0.00, p .987).The two groups also did not differ in naming speed, which could be affected by inattention. CORRELATIONS AMONG VARIABLES Intercorrelations among the variables are shown in table II. As the sample size was more than 200, correlations as low as .14 were significant but not meaningful. The negative correlations of naming speed and visual-orthographic skills with other variables reflect the fact that higher scores indicate lower performance. Although reading scores were standardized by age, age was negatively related to word reading and reading comprehension. Thus, there was a tendency for older children to have lower age-based standard scores, which suggests that they had a more severe reading disability than younger children. Speed reading index
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