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The deficit of letter processing in developmental dyslexia: combining evidence from dyslexics, typical readers and illiterate adults
Author(s) -
Fernandes Tânia,
Vale Ana P.,
Martins Bruno,
Morais José,
Kolinsky Régine
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/desc.12102
Subject(s) - dyslexia , psychology , phonological awareness , developmental dyslexia , reading (process) , developmental psychology , literacy , cognitive psychology , linguistics , pedagogy , philosophy
To clarify the link between anomalous letter processing and developmental dyslexia, we examined the impact of surrounding contours on letter vs. pseudo‐letter processing by three groups of children – phonological dyslexics and two controls, one matched for chronological age, the other for reading level – and three groups of adults differing by schooling and literacy – unschooled illiterates and ex‐illiterates, and schooled literates. For pseudo‐letters, all groups showed congruence effects ( CE : better performance for targets surrounded by a congruent than by an incongruent shape). In contrast, for letters, only dyslexics exhibited a CE , strongly related to their phonological recoding abilities even after partialling out working memory, whereas the reverse held true for the pseudo‐letter CE . In illiterate adults, the higher letter knowledge, the smaller their letter CE ; their letter processing was immune (to some extent) to inference from surrounding information. The absence of a letter CE in illiterates and the positive CE in dyslexics have their origin in different aspects of the same ability, i.e. phonological recoding.