Abstracts Bangor Dyslexia Conference 20
Keynotes and TR Miles Public Lecture
Angela Fawcett (Thursday 11.15)
Theory into Practice
University of Sheffield
In this talk, I outline the thinking behind the cerebellar deficit hypothesis of dyslexia, which we have developed in Sheffield. We believe that this approach provides new answers to some of the important questions in dyslexia research. First, I provide an overview of recent evidence that dyslexia is more than a language difficulty, identifying problems in balance and speed as well as phonology. Recent neuroscience theory indicates that all these skills are linked to cerebellar function, with a central role for the cerebellum in cognitive skills, in particular those scaffolded by spoken language, in addition to its well-recognised role in motor skills. Third, I outline evidence from our lab. that cerebellar function is abnormal in dyslexia. I consider three specific lines of evidence: behavior, the brain, and learning. Finally, I provide a causal chain for the development of dyslexia in terms of cerebellar deficit from birth, considering the implications of this framework for some of the key questions in dyslexia research.
Jean-François Démonet (Thursday 16.00)
Neuroimaging and Dyslexia
University of Toulouse
Developmental dyslexia (or ‘Specific Reading Disability’) is a frequent condition in which children with normal intelligence and sensory abilities exhibit learning deficit for reading. Many evidences established its biological origin and the preponderance of phonological disorders, even though important phenotypic variability and comorbidity are observed. Discrepant theories are proposed to account for the cognitive and neurological dimensions of dyslexia. Genetic studies showed that different loci are likely to intervene in the determinism of cognitive disorders; no one-to-one relationship could be established between symptoms and a given genomic locus. In both children and adult dyslexics, neuro-imaging studies demonstrated (i) defective activity in regions crucially involved in language functions (e.g. the left fusiform gyrus for reading), (ii) abnormal connectivity between these regions, (iii) brain plasticity in subjects who benefited from innovative remediation programs, (iv) evidences of brain dysfunction in infants in ‘at-risk’ families that may hasten early diagnosis and remediation procedures.
Chris Singleton (Friday 11.15)
Dyslexia and Computers: solutions and reservations.
University of Hull
The computer is a tool for delivering content (text, graphics, sound) in an interactive way and recording responses. In the context of dyslexia the computer can serve four main functions: Screening, Assessment, Training (Computer Assisted Learning), and Support. The principal advantages of using the computer for these purposes are that it can provide a multi-sensory learning environment that children and adults find stimulating, motivating and enjoyable, it can deliver individualised instruction that has been differentiated for particular individuals and which helps them to become independent learners, and economises on time, effort and training of teachers. In delivering screening and assessment the computer has the additional advantages of more standardised presentation, improved accuracy of measurement, and speedier administration, especially with adaptive tests. But there are dangers, too. Because computer-based tools tend to be superficially attractive they may give a spurious impression of educational efficacy, especially to less critical professionals. By some they may be erroneously regarded as a universal panacea. Teachers and psychologists still need to ensure that all computer-based tools meet appropriate educational and psychological standards, and that they are used in ways that will bring significant benefit to the education of students with dyslexia.
Alan Beaton (Friday, 16.00)
Acquired Dyslexia and Biological Aspects of Dyslexia
University of Swansea
Developmental dyslexia is almost universally considered to be biologically determined. Although the exact mechanisms involved have yet to be identified, it is clear that a lifetime’s experience is insufficient to fully counter-act the effects of whatever anomaly or anomalies of brain development is or are responsible for the condition. Studies relevant to the biological underpinnings of reading disability will ultimately provide clues as to the mechanisms which constrain the brain’s capacity for efficient reading.
In contrast to developmental dyslexia, acquired forms of reading disorder in adults reveal the effects of disruption to a system which has taken years to develop. Between these two extremes, different forms of dyslexia may be produced by cerebral insult experienced at different ages. Thus while acquired and developmental dyslexia differ in the nature and timing of their precipitating causes, they may be considered as in some sense forming a biological continuum. From this perspective, developmental and acquired forms of dyslexia represent the effects of insult to the brain at different stages in its development from gestation to maturity. The micro-structure of the cognitive architecture supporting reading reflects how the brain interacts with experience at these different stages.
Usha Goswami (Saturday, 11.15)
Phonology, Reading Development and Dyslexia: A Cross-Language Perspective
University of Cambridge
In this talk, I will provide a theoretical overview at the cognitive level of reading acquisition and developmental dyslexia across languages. Phonological awareness is a strong predictor of reading development, and develops at three linguistic levels. These are the levels of the syllable, the rhyme and the phoneme. I will develop the hypothesis that syllabic representation is basic to many languages, and that children’s ability to recognise syllables and rhymes precedes learning a particular spelling system. I will argue that this developmental view can readily explain cross-language differences in reading acquisition. I will then argue that it can also explain cross-language differences in the manifestation of developmental dyslexia. I will suggest that some of the processes underpinning language acquisition are disrupted in developmental dyslexia, and that this leads to deficits in the development of phonological representation before literacy is acquired. This causes characteristic and persistent problems in tasks reliant on the phonological system such as short-term memory and speeded naming, and also causes later literacy problems. According to this theoretical analysis, dyslexic children in all languages should have a phonological deficit at the syllable and rhyme levels prior to acquiring literacy. Their problems in acquiring literacy then arise because the phonological foundation upon which reading must build is deficient. This leads to consequent problems in acquiring letter-sound relationships and in restructuring the phonological lexicon to represent phoneme-level information. On this account, a deficit in phonemic awareness is not a cause of dyslexic reading problems, but a correlate of them.
Joe Torgesen (Saturday, 14.00)
New Discoveries and Directions from Intervention Research (TR Miles public lecture)
Florida State University
A complete science of intervention for children with reading disabilities depends on findings from at least three types of research. This lecture will present recent discoveries from research that has focused on: 1) determining which instructional content and procedures are most effective in preventing and remediating reading difficulties; 2) examining changes in brain functioning as a response to intervention; and, 3) studying the conditions that must be in place to "normalize" reading skill in children with reading difficulties, or at-risk for reading failure. Although recent research has produced much new knowledge in these areas, there remain interesting and important questions for further research.
Thursday 24th July 2003
Parallel Sessions 1,3 and 5 on Theory and Practice
Ronald Stringer
Irranejad, S., McCoubrey, G., French, L., Gotlieb, M. & Haider, M.
North American Practice in the Diagnosis of Dyslexia for Adolescents and Young Adults
McGill University, Montreal
We present data on our analysis of archived dyslexia assessment reports. Similar research has found that the “modal battery” used to diagnose a learning disability consisted of a single, intelligence test. The assessment reports we have surveyed thus far utilise an average of five standardised tests. Generally, reports included tests to measure intelligence, general academic achievement, reading achievement, visual processing, and receptive language. While the tests commonly used would support diagnoses based upon discrepancies between verbal and nonverbal intelligence, or between intelligence and achievement, there was rarely a basis for diagnosis based upon performance in a reading-related cognitive process, such as phonological processing.
Åke Olofsson
Gruber, M.
How do dyslexic university students differ from adults with a childhood diagnosis of dyslexia: Lessons to learn for special education
Stavanger University College
University students with a late diagnosis of dyslexia were compared to adults with a childhood diagnosis of dyslexia and a chronological age matched control group on tasks assessing several aspects of word decoding, phonological abilities, reading comprehension, vocabulary and spelling. Both groups of dyslexics showed persistence of phonological problems and poor word recognition and spelling skills but no problems in reading comprehension. University students with dyslexia scored higher on phonological awareness. The childhood dyslexics had chosen a different path through the educational system, apparently avoiding reading and language studies, and today belong to a group having no or very low access to university studies.
Sarah White
Milne, E., Rosen, S., Hansen, P., Swettenham, J., Frith, U., & Ramus, F.
Sensorimotor Processing in Dyslexic Children: A Multiple Case Study
University College London
23 children with dyslexia were compared to 22 control children matched for age and intelligence on tasks assessing literacy as well as phonological, visual, auditory and motor abilities. As a group, the children were impaired on phonological, but not sensorimotor, tasks. Furthermore, phonological skill and intelligence were able to account for the variation in literacy skill, to the exclusion of all sensorimotor factors. Sensorimotor deficits therefore do not seem to play a significant causal role in the literacy impairments seen in dyslexia. Instead, a specific phonological deficit is the most probable cause. The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to remediation.
Kristina Herden
Snowling, M.J.
An investigation into verbal-verbal paired-associate learning ability of poor and typical readers
University of York
Three experiments assess the relationship between phonological skills and verbal-verbal paired-associate (PA) learning. Groups of poor readers, chronological age (CA) and reading age (RA) controls were administered tests of word and nonword reading, phoneme deletion and three different verbal-verbal PA learning tasks, which required them to learn pairs of CVC nonwords. There were group differences on all of the reading and phonological tasks. However, group differences on the verbal-verbal PA learning task were only found when the response items of the learning task were phonetically similar to one another. The results are discussed within a developmental model of reading.
Chris Struiksma
The Rotterdam Approach towards Dyslexia, phase 1: A school-based Remedial Programme
Centre for Educational Services Rotterdam
A two-part protocolled trajectory was developed: remedial teaching directed towards working with texts and a computer-assisted word training. This trajectory would need to serve two purposes: averting a possibly unfavourable reading development of a significant proportion of the pupils with reading problems and providing relevant information, in particular with respect to the persistence of reading problems, to make it possible to diagnose dyslexia in pupils for whom this was not successful. It would seem that intensive remedial teaching returns two out of three potential non-starters, into the group of pupils who in normal primary education can in principle be adequately taught using a standard approach to the curriculum.
Debby Zambo
The Conceptual Representations of Reading of Students with Dyslexia
Arizona State University
The researcher examined how children with dyslexia think their minds work when they read, i.e., their conceptual representation of reading. Conceptual representations are important because they contain ideas about cognition, emotion, and motivation. Eleven students and their six teachers from a private school for students with learning differences were interviewed. Theory was developed from cognitive science, brain research, motivation, and dyslexia. Overarching themes reveal the status of reading, influence of emotions, importance of demystifying the brain, and a community created by the students. Results have direct application for educators and the children themselves in their attempt to cope with dyslexia.
Solveig Lyster
Morphological awareness and reading development – evidence from a training study
University of Oslo
The aims of this paper are to present theoretical arguments and empirical evidence for the impact of morphological awareness on reading development. Results from a 7 year follow-up study of 107 children show that training children to identify morphemes in words in kindergarten has an even greater longitudinal effect on reading development than phonological and phonemic awareness training in the Norwegian kindergarten system. Phonological awareness had effect on early reading development for a small group of children while the effect of morphological awareness training could be traced to grade 6. Regression analyses give support to the impact of morphological awareness on reading.
Geraldine Price
Text construction and the impact of the dyslexic cognitive profile on the writing process: an exploration of dyslexic writers in Higher Education
University of Southampton
This paper explores the impact of the dyslexic cognitive profile on the writing process. Seven case studies are used to demonstrate writing behaviours. Real-time sampling procedures and semi-structured interviews provide unique data from undergraduate and post-graduate dyslexic students. Deficits in working memory storage and capacity, language retrieval difficulties and speed of information processing are shown to have an impact upon (a) the ways in which dyslexic students cope with writing in this context; and (b) the strategies which these students use which often reflect the individual, cognitive profile.
Mary Woodward
Sczerbinski, M., McCrocklin, S.
Individual differences in poor readers’ response to literacy intervention – a cognitive analysis
University of Sheffield
A retrospective study was conducted to explore the intervention effects of the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech (LiPS, formerly known as Auditory Discrimination in Depth, ADD, Lindamood and Lindamood, 1998) on different aspects of literacy e.g. phonetic decoding, word recognition, reading rate, and reading comprehension. Using a sample of 495 students, selected from a larger clinical database, the relationship between students’ pre-intervention psycholinguistic profile and their post-intervention improvement on literacy measures is investigated. Although age is found to be a significant predictor of intervention outcome, the relationship of cognitive variables is less clear. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
Ruth Fielding-Barnsley
What Do Teachers Of Reading Need To Understand About Metalinguistics?
Queensland University of Technology