Abstract
This study seeks to clarify the relation between the phonological skills of both dyslectic readers and prelingually deafened readers and their ability to conceptually process written stimuli. Data was gathered by means of a test designed for the assessment of orthographic and phonemic awareness, and a categorization paradigm designed for the examination of written word processing skills. Twenty individuals with diagnosed dyslexia (grade = 9.05), 11 individuals with prelingual deafness (grade = 8.18), and 25 normally-developing hearing readers (n = 25, grade = 9.00) participated in the study. In general, findings indicate that the reading disorders manifested by dyslectic and deaf readers have different origins none of which is directly related to their phonological abilities. It is suggested that in prelingually deafened readers, but maybe also in dyslectic readers, teachers should foster the development of orthographic knowledge as the basis for proficient reading without making such development contingent on the processing of the phonology of written words.
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Notes
In Israel primary school starts at about age six.
Israeli sign language (ISL) is the signed language used by the deaf community in Israel. As American Sign Language, it has a unique, systematic phonology represented by a limited set of formational parameters such as hand shape, hand movement, place of articulation, etc.
Except in a rough matching of sign order to word order in Hebrew, Signed Hebrew and spoken Hebrew differ rather substantially in most other linguistic aspects. Probably the most outstanding difference in this regard is an almost complete lack of devices in Signed Hebrew to represent the rich morphological structure of spoken Hebrew.
In Hebrew, a significant part of phonetic (in particular vowel) information is not represented by letter-graphemes interlaced into the consonantal letters, but by means of a set of small diacritical marks (dashes and points) normally placed separately and clearly below the consonantal letter string. This method of vowelization is called pointing.
The written word frequency estimates of the words referencing food concepts varied from 2–48 occurrences per 1 million—based on Frost and Plaut (2005).
For example, the letter graphemes ‘’ (taf) and ‘’ (tet) are both read as the phoneme /t/ and the letter graphemes ‘’ and ‘ ’ both can assimilate the phonemes /a/, /o/, /u/, and /i/ depending on how they are pointed. The same phenomenon exists also with regard to vowel diacritics. For example, the vowel diacritics ‘’ (kamatz) and ‘’ (patah) both represent the phoneme /a/ whereas the vowel diacritics ‘’ (segol) and ‘’ (tsere) stand both for the phoneme /e/.
A nonparametric procedure for calculating differences between two variables based upon rank order.
A nonparametric procedure for calculating Oneway analysis of variance by ranks.
All significant results reported from post-hoc analyses are significant at a probability level of p ≤ 0.05.
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Miller, P. The Role of Phonology in the Word Decoding Skills of Poor Readers: Evidence from Individuals with Prelingual Deafness or Diagnosed Dyslexia. J Dev Phys Disabil 19, 385–408 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-007-9057-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-007-9057-5