index by author
index by subject
| |
home index by author index by subject |
Friday stream 1-4 Session 09.50 - 11.10 Length 25 minutes
A. M. Di Betta and C. Romani
The University of Birmingham, UK c.romani@bham.ac.uk
Abstract
Developmental dyslexic children are impaired at learning new lexical (phonological) representations (Otto, 1961; Vellutino et al., 1975; Mayringer & Wimmer, 2000) and such impairment may continue into adulthood (Baddeley, 1993; Romani & Stringer, 1994). It remains to be established: (1) the extent to which such difficulties apply to individuals with different patterns of developmental dyslexia/dysgraphia; (2) what kinds of representations are spared/impaired; (3) the relationship with phonological STM; (4) how well lexical learning predicts the severity of dyslexia/dysgraphia compared to phonological awareness and phonological STM. We investigated the ability to learn new spoken and written words (non-words, Dutch words, and Italian words) in a group of 20 adult developmental dyslexics/dysgraphics. Findings demonstrate that the lexical learning deficit is: (1) widespread: it affects all dyslexics/dysgraphics (although to a different extent), independently of the pattern of impairment; (2) representation specific: it involves acquiring new sequences of letters or phonemes but not visuo-spatial or lexical-semantic representations; (3) temporally specific: it involves the establishment of LTM representations in the face of sometimes preserved STM. Finally, (4) together with STM (but unlike phonological awareness), lexical learning is a strong predictor of the severity of dysgraphia. Theoretical and clinical implications will be discussed.
 |
 |