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When looking for information on dyslexia, one thing that is often ignored is naming speed. Word naming speed in reading is a somewhat complex, but homogeneous phenomenon among dyslexics. However, reading speed is a very useful measure to detect child or adult poor readers. Even when a developmental dyslexic grows into adulthood and has learned to compensate for their particular reading problem, reading speed will remain slow.
The cognitive processes that impact reading speed include attention, perceptual, motor and linguistic processes and these need to rapidly interact to complete the reading process. A problem in any one of these areas, may lead to the slowing of recognising and pronouncing a written text irrespective of the location of, or the number of problems a reader has.
For instance, if a reader is slow to identify the individual letters, then those letters that frequently appear together in words do not get recognised as easily. E.g., "th" is a common prefix to a word. This deficit would then impact on orthographic pattern knowledge that is an essential component in the development of automaticity in skilled reading. The more time spent in recognising words will affect the level of comprehension of a target text. While this may suggest a retrieval problem, rather than an issue with vocabulary itself, it is important to remember that this is just an example problem give here. The problem a reader has may be in any one of the processes mentioned in the above paragraph that contributed to the automaticity of skilled reading.
Why this information on dyslexia is important, is because a lot of time is spent on remediation programs that focus more on the amount of and the pattern of errors. But if reading speed is to be improved, then remediation programs must focus as much on improving the speed of recognising words to improve comprehension. While a great deal of problems can be phonological in nature (e.g. a difficulty with decoding written words to produce the right pronunciation), this is not always the issue. There is not much point in a remediation program that focuses purely on phonological tasks when that clearly is not the, or the only issue.
Regrettably, to properly assess an individual for their specific difficulties will require quite a lot of testing on a range of tasks. This will of course take time and money, and this is why professional assessments can costly.
Thus, when searching for more information on dyslexia, make sure to keep the above points in mind. Reading speed can be a strong indication of a problem that can still be picked up even in adulthood. Not every dyslexic will have the same pattern of problems, and any remediation program should consider this when designing tasks to aid someone with this lifelong condition.
The cognitive processes that impact reading speed include attention, perceptual, motor and linguistic processes and these need to rapidly interact to complete the reading process. A problem in any one of these areas, may lead to the slowing of recognising and pronouncing a written text irrespective of the location of, or the number of problems a reader has.
For instance, if a reader is slow to identify the individual letters, then those letters that frequently appear together in words do not get recognised as easily. E.g., "th" is a common prefix to a word. This deficit would then impact on orthographic pattern knowledge that is an essential component in the development of automaticity in skilled reading. The more time spent in recognising words will affect the level of comprehension of a target text. While this may suggest a retrieval problem, rather than an issue with vocabulary itself, it is important to remember that this is just an example problem give here. The problem a reader has may be in any one of the processes mentioned in the above paragraph that contributed to the automaticity of skilled reading.
Why this information on dyslexia is important, is because a lot of time is spent on remediation programs that focus more on the amount of and the pattern of errors. But if reading speed is to be improved, then remediation programs must focus as much on improving the speed of recognising words to improve comprehension. While a great deal of problems can be phonological in nature (e.g. a difficulty with decoding written words to produce the right pronunciation), this is not always the issue. There is not much point in a remediation program that focuses purely on phonological tasks when that clearly is not the, or the only issue.
Regrettably, to properly assess an individual for their specific difficulties will require quite a lot of testing on a range of tasks. This will of course take time and money, and this is why professional assessments can costly.
Thus, when searching for more information on dyslexia, make sure to keep the above points in mind. Reading speed can be a strong indication of a problem that can still be picked up even in adulthood. Not every dyslexic will have the same pattern of problems, and any remediation program should consider this when designing tasks to aid someone with this lifelong condition.
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You can get more information on dyslexia by visiting http://testfordyslexia.org. Go now and perhaps find something that may help you.
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