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Which Tasks Best Discriminate between Dyslexic University Students and Controls in a Transparent Language?
Author(s) -
Re Anna Maria,
Tressoldi Patrizio E.,
Cornoldi Cesare,
Lucangeli Daniela
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
dyslexia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1099-0909
pISSN - 1076-9242
DOI - 10.1002/dys.431
Subject(s) - dyslexia , psychology , cognitive psychology , linguistics , reading (process) , philosophy
The need for a battery for testing adult dyslexia, and especially university students, is being increasingly recognized in view of the increased number of adult requests for a dyslexia examination in relation to both assistance and protection from discrimination. The present study examines the discriminative validity of a battery we have developed—the Battery for the Assessment of Reading and Writing in Adulthood—through comparison of the performance of 24 university students with a history of severe developmental dyslexia and 99 controls. All the reading, writing, lexical decision and spelling tasks of the battery, except omissions in a lexical decision task and reading comprehension, showed a good discriminatory power. In addition, use of just two of these tasks (fluency in reading a text and spelling under articulatory suppression) gave 87% sensitivity and 97% specificity. Our results confirm that in transparent languages, measures of phonological automaticity are the best indexes of reading decoding competence, particularly in adults. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.