The Nature of the Phonological Deficit Underlying Disorders of Spoken and Written Language
Abstract
There is now considerable evidence that the deficit underlying literacy disorders is a phonological one (Rack, Snowling & Olson, 1992). This hypothesis fits with research that has shown that the spelling and reading abilities of children who have a current spoken phonological disorder, as opposed to delay, perform more poorly than controls on standard measures of reading and spelling. Further, phonologically disordered children would appear to have particular difficulty spelling those words where a rule (e.g. final ‘e’ lengthens the preceding vowel) needs to be applied. These studies suggest that one deficit underlying difficulties in the acquisition of spoken and written language might be an impaired ability to abstract and use phonological rules. Two experiments are described that compare the ability of groups of children with specific reading disability and reading-age matched controls to abstract non-linguistic and phoneme-grapheme rules. The findings indicated a specific deficit in rule abstraction in that children with specific reading disability had difficulties in dealing with rule flexibility. This conclusion is supported by the efficacy of intervention programs that targeted poor readers phoneme-grapheme rule use. It was concluded that at least some children who are identified as having specific reading disability have a general underlying deficit affecting the ability to derive complex rules.
Keywords
Poor Reader Real Word Disable Reader Phonological Deficit Specific Reading DisabilityPreview
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