| home presentations conference reports search |
|
|
Presenters: Prof. T.R. Miles, UCNW Bangor
M.Helen Southwood,
University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Liv Engen, Dyslexia Research
Foundation. Stavanger, Norway
Professor Miles described a study involving adult dyslexics and controls, who were presented with specifically structured sentences and asked to repeat them back to the experimenter verbatim. Where the sentence was repeated back incorrectly, it was again presented by the experimenter, for as many times as was necessary, until it was repeated back correctly. Performance by the individual was measured by the number of trials required to get a correct verbatim response.
The study showed the dyslexic adults didn't differ from the controls in recalling the general content of the sentences, but required more trials to recall correct verbatim sentences. This raised a discussion about the difference between a 'careless lapse' and a genuine failure, and Tim Miles delivered an anecdotal commentary, to vividly illustrate his observations made over some 50 years of involvement with dyslexia.
He further discussed the theoretical implications of the study and particularly questioned the concept of 'semantic satiation' explaining that this first appeared as far back as 1907 and adding that currently EEG work on semantic satiation is being studied. Finally, it was questioned as to whether dyslexic readers could be employing the semantic reading route, and the dilemma of the researcher was highlighted, when Professor Miles posed a number of unanswered questions - that have yet to be investigated.
Helen Southwood presented a research paper describing 'Priming in phonological dyslexics: Support for simultaneous activation of reading routes'. This study was undertaken by M.Helen Southwood and Anjan Chatterjee and designed to evaluate their 'simultaneous activation hypothesis' (SAH). The 'SAH' was developed to take account of the priming paradigm, that all routes are needed, to read a letter string or make word predictions. It also predicts that priming should affect oral reading.
The study was undertaken with two participants, both 'acquired' dyslexic adults, and the results corroborated the hypothesis that multiple routes activate simultaneously when reading. The findings also showed that reading routes can be manipulated in phonological dyslexics and thus provide possible implications for treatment. However, the limitations of the sample size had to be taken into account before generalisations could be made from the study, but it provided a possible basis for future enquiry.
Liv Engen presented research that questioned whether phonological awareness has a direct impact on reading comprehension, over and above the indirect effect mediated by by word decoding. The study, undertaken through the Dyslexia Research Foundation in Stavanger, involved 1300 Grade 1 Norwegian children, aged between 7 years 5 months and 8 years 5 months, designed to screen all first graders and to offer possible insights into identifying potential impediments that may affect reading skill acquisition.
A battery of tests were administered including; group tests requiring written answers, and sub test skills of syllable awareness, phoneme awareness. Word decoding and reading comprehension tests assessed individuals skills. The results were analysed by structural modelling and separate analyses were performed for pupils with average word decoding performance and pupils with poor word decoding.
The presented results suggest that in both average and poor decoders, phonological awareness had an impact on reading comprehension, and indicates that phonological factors play an independent role in the processing of text. Explaining this observation, it was suggested that vocabulary and short term memory are two critical factors in comprehension, and that possibly both are influenced or determined by phonological ability. Alternatively, it may be that phonological awareness partly reflects some of the metacognitive processes assumed to be involved in reading comprehension.
Collectively, the presentations in this session illustrated the diverse range of research currently investigating how the reading process operates. Data gathered from researchers and teacher observation is continually shedding new light on the complexities of decoding and extracting information from text. By using a range of assessment and testing knowledge, designed as a result of extensive research, clearly an informed understanding of dysfunction in the process can only improve the development of early screening mechanisms and appropriate teaching programmes.
home . presentations . conference reports . search
 |
 |