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Dimitris Nikolopoulos (from the University of Patras) investigated the manifestation of dyslexia in Greek, a language with a more regular orthography than English. It was proposed that orthographic transparency is a major factor in explaining manifestations of dyslexia. Twenty eight Grade-2 and Grade-4 dyslexic children were compared to CA and RA controls on measures of word and nonword reading, spelling, phonological awareness, phonological processing and syntactic awareness. Greek dyslexic readers were found to be highly accurate, but very slow, when reading words and nonwords, and when responding to questions about the phonological structure of words. However, despite the small number of reading errors, the dyslexics made significantly more errors than CA controls on both reading measures, and significantly more errors than RA controls on nonword reading. Deficiencies were also found on the spelling test. These written language difficulties were associated with deficiencies in the phonological domain as measured by phonological awareness and rapid naming . Subtypes of dyslexia were also identified: rate dyslexia, accuracy dyslexia and balanced dyslexia. It was concluded that the underlying cognitive deficit of Greek and English dyslexics is the same (phonological deficit), but the degree of severity and the manifestation of the deficit in orthographies differs. Greek dyslexics suffer from milder cognitive, reading deficits and are more affected in reading speed whereas English dyslexics suffer from more severe cognitive, reading deficits and are affected in reading accuracy.
The second talk, by Marcin Szcerbinski from the University of Sheffield, followed on from this by presenting data investigating the relationship between reading and various cognitive measures in Polish, which is a regular orthography. The study included 100 Polish Grade 1-3 children who were administered with a battery of reading, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, phonological processing, and visuo-motor tasks. The results showed that phonological awareness and rapid naming were the strongest predictors of reading, each making a unique contribution to reading success. It seems that such 'double underpinnings' are universal to all alphabetic orthographies. A small number of children were also identified as dyslexics and subtyped into 'low accuracy' dyslexia and 'low speed' dyslexia; this distinction is also valid across different languages and writing systems. However, the degree of mastery of different phonological awareness tests in its relationship to reading, and the manifestations of dyslexia in different alphabetic orthographies are dependent on language factors, orthographic consistency and teaching reading.
Astrid Geudens from the University of Antwerp went on to talk about whether Dutch (a regular orthography) preliterate children rely on onsets and rimes in auditory segmentation of CV-syllables and VC syllables, and how the ability to analyse these biphonemic syllables is related to later reading success. The findings failed to support the existence of onset-rime units in phonological awareness: children found it easier to break up a rime (VC) than to manipulate a syllable between an onset and a rime (CV). It seems that onsets and rimes may be salient for children in implicit phonological awareness, but are not units in their explicit phonological awareness. The results also indicated that children progress naturally from a stage in which they detect phonemes in VCs to a stage in which they are able to detect phonemes in CVs also. In a follow up study the analysis task was replicated and related to a standardised reading test. The results showed that CV performance is a better predictor of later reading ability than VC performance. It can be concluded that in Dutch children VC awareness develops first and thereafter CV awareness which is related to later reading success.
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