Dyslexia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Dyslexia, including details on learning, reading, education, teaching, treatment.

Influence of auditory-verbal, visual-verbal, visual, and visual-visual processing speed on reading and spelling at the end of Grade 1.

Plaza M, Cohen H

Laboratoire Cognition et Développement, CNRS, Paris, France. plaza@psycho.univ-paris5.fr

This study examined cognitive processing speed through four modalities (auditory-verbal, visual-verbal, visual, and visual-visual) at the end of Grade 1 and how it influences reading and spelling. The subjects were 124 French-speaking children, selected for their contrasting performance on reading and spelling tasks. The children in the first group (N=69) were average readers; the second group of children (N=55) performed worse or much worse on all reading and spelling tasks. The experimental design consisted of a set of 10 tasks administered in two sessions. The major findings reveal that: (1) the children with reading difficulties displayed low and slow performance on most cognitive tasks, whatever the modality; (2) auditory-verbal and visual-verbal processing speed significantly predicted written language, which was not the case with the visual modalities; and (3) that visual problems did not appear to be a potential cause of reading problems in most delayed readers. The findings also confirm the independence of phonological and naming-speed skills in reading development and reading impairment.

Published 14 February 2005 in Brain Cogn, 57(2): 189-94.
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