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In this study, we analyzed the emotional and motivational aspects characterizing the profile of university students with Specific Learning Disorders (SLD). We assessed 61 university students, 32 with SLD (age = 23.6) and 29 in the control group (age = 23.00). The results highlighted that individuals with SLD exhibit higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower resilience compared to the control group. The Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale - Short Form, which explores perfectionism, did not reveal differences between the groups. Conversely, lower scores emerged in SLD students for the intrinsic motivation sub-scales of the Academic Motivation Scale. This indicates less engagement in studying out of personal cognitive curiosity. The Self-Regulated Knowledge Scale - University, which measures various cognitive strategies, showed significantly lower scores in the SLD group for knowledge linking, knowledge training, and knowledge critique. This suggests a lower frequency with which SLD students attempt to connect new knowledge with what they already possess, apply their knowledge, ask questions, and critically analyze what they have learned. Therefore, psychological and motivational consequences are evident in this population and can impact well-being and quality of life.
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The issue of literacy challenges among dyslexic adults remains a significant concern. This study investigates spelling deficits among highly educated adults with dyslexia learning a transparent orthography. Thirty-eight Italian dyslexic university students were examined and compared to a group of age- and education-matched typical readers. Firstly, we analyzed spelling performance using a Passage Dictation Test. Additionally, lists of words varying in length and word frequency were dictated under two experimental conditions: a normal condition (NC) and an articulatory suppression condition (ASC). The ASC assessed the participants' ability to spell with interference to the phonological (sublexical) spelling procedure, i.e., the most likely compensated spelling strategy of Italian dyslexic spellers. The results clearly indicated that, in spelling the meaningful passage, dyslexic participants underperformed compared to the controls, with a prevalence of lexical errors, despite the comparison with the normative reference data showing only mild spelling difficulties. In spelling isolated words in normal conditions, dyslexic participants performed within the reference norms and as accurately as control participants across all stimuli (short words, high- and low-frequency words), except for long words, where their spelling difficulties were evident. Articulatory suppression significantly impaired dyslexics' performance on short stimuli, reducing the usual sublexical advantage associated with them, and exacerbated misspellings on long words. Additionally, articulatory suppression disproportionately affected dyslexics' performance on high-frequency words, diminishing the typical lexical advantage associated with these words. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical, clinical, and educational implications.
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The COVID-19 pandemic drastically affected many areas and contexts of today's society, including school and family. Several studies focused on the worldwide effects of school closures on students' learning outcomes, context, and well-being. However, the data emerging from these studies are often inconsistent and fragmentary, highlighting the need of a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon. This need is especially urgent for the countries with the most severe school closure, like Italy. This systematic review aims to collect the opinions of parents, teachers, and students on: other dimensions of Italian primary school students affected by school closures, beyond academic performance; hypothetical agreement between the opinions of parents, teachers, and students regarding the different effects of school closures on Italian primary school students; possible differences between the effects of school closures on Italian primary school students and the students in other countries. Our search was conducted using PRISMA 2020 guidelines on Web of Science, Pubmed, Scopus, and EBSCOHost. The results obtained from 34 articles revealed a strong concern on the part of all stakeholders involved in learning during the pandemic, with evident negative effects for Italian school students. The constraint on distance learning led to a drastic change in everyone's routine, and a negative emotional change on the part of young students. Parents and teachers generally considered distance learning to be ineffective for the education of their children and students; they encountered technical-practical difficulties in the use of electronic devices for participation in school activities; overall learning deficits on the part of students, especially in mathematics, as confirmed by INVALSI results were also found. The investigation reveals a condition of shared emotional and academic performance difficulty, and a further challenging circumstance for students previously at risk of marginalization. Further research in this field is paramount to identify new and adequate recovery strategies.
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COVID-19 , Pandemias , Instituições Acadêmicas , Estudantes , COVID-19/epidemiologia , COVID-19/psicologia , Humanos , Itália/epidemiologia , Criança , Estudantes/psicologia , Aprendizagem , Educação a Distância , SARS-CoV-2 , Pais/psicologia , Professores Escolares/psicologiaRESUMO
We compared reading words and pseudo-words presented in single displays (as typical of psycholinguistic research) with stimuli presented in multiple displays (as typical of real-life conditions and clinical testing) under controlled conditions. Italian sixth-grade children with and without a reading deficit showed an advantage in reading times for multiple over single displays. This finding was partly ascribed to the capacity to overlap the non-decisional component of the response, an effect present in control readers as well as children with dyslexia. Furthermore, there were several indications in the data that the requirement to read sequentially taxes performance by augmenting the relative impact of the experimental manipulations used. This effect was present in both groups of children, but proportionally stronger in children with dyslexia. The study contributes to filling the gap between single and multiple displays, a condition more like real-life situations.
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Dislexia , Criança , Humanos , Psicolinguística , Tempo de Reação/fisiologiaRESUMO
Several studies underlined the negative effects of forced social isolation on emotional processes in younger population. The current study aimed to review existing evidence of the pandemic's impact on the emotional regulation of Italian children aged 0-12 years in order to identify personal and contextual factors that may adversely impact their developmental process. Different electronic databases (Web of Science, APA PsycInfo, APA PsycArticles, MEDLINE, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, and Scopus) were used to identify peer-reviewed studies published in English and Italian. Thirteen studies were included in the review, covering a total of 18.843 children. All studies reported negative effects of the lockdown on a child's emotional processes. The most affected were children aged 3-5 years, those living in Northern Italy, and those with low socioeconomic status (SES) families. Alterations in emotional processes were associated with sleep disturbances, quality of family relationships, personality structures, the coping strategies used, and time spent with technological devices. Finally, two- (time × parenting) and three-way (time × parenting × environmental sensitivity) interactions resulted significantly in predicting a child's emotional regulation, respectively, in terms of externalizing and internalizing behaviors. This review remarks that children's emotional processes were negatively impacted during social lockdown, especially where acute social isolation interacted with a set of dispositional and situational risk factors.
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Emoções , Pandemias , Humanos , Criança , Emoções/fisiologia , Poder Familiar/psicologia , Personalidade , Adaptação PsicológicaRESUMO
This study analyzed the efficacy of EEG resting state and neuropsychological performances in discriminating patients with different forms of dementia, or mild cognitive impairment (MCI), compared with control subjects. Forty-four patients with dementia (nineteen patients with AD, and seven with FTD), eighteen with MCI, and nineteen healthy subjects, matched for age and gender, underwent an extensive neuropsychological test battery and an EEG resting state recording. Results showed greater theta activation in posterior areas in the Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Fronto-Temporal Dementia (FTD) groups compared with the MCI and control groups. AD patients also showed more delta band activity in the temporal-occipital areas than controls and MCI patients. By contrast, the alpha and beta bands did not discriminate among groups. A hierarchical clustering analysis based on neuropsychological and EEG data yielded a three-factor solution. The clusters differed for several neuropsychological measures, as well as for beta and theta bands. Neuropsychological tests were most sensitive in capturing an initial cognitive decline, while increased theta activity was uniquely associated with a substantial worsening of the clinical picture, representing a negative prognostic factor. In line with the Research Domains Framework (RDoC) perspective, the joint use of cognitive and neurophysiological data may provide converging evidence to document the evolution of cognitive skills in at-risk individuals.
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Reading comparisons across transparent and opaque orthographies indicate critical differences that may reveal the mechanisms involved in orthographic decoding across orthographies. Here, we address the role of criterion and speed of processing in accounting for performance differences across languages. We used binary tasks involving orthographic (words-pseudowords), and non-orthographic materials (female-male faces), and analyzed results based on Ratcliff's Diffusion model. In the first study, 29 English and 28 Italian university students were given a lexical decision test. English observers made more errors than Italian observers while showing generally similar reaction times. In terms of the diffusion model, the two groups differed in the decision criterion: English observers used a lower criterion. There was no overall cross-linguistic difference in processing speed, but English observers showed lower values for words (and a smaller lexicality effect) than Italians. In the second study, participants were given a face gender judgment test. Female faces were identified slower than the male ones with no language group differences. In terms of the diffusion model, there was no difference between groups in drift rate and boundary separation. Overall, the new main finding concerns a difference in decision criterion limited to the orthographic task: English individuals showed a more lenient criterion in judging the lexicality of the items, a tendency that may explain why, despite lower accuracy, they were not slower. It is concluded that binary tasks (and the Diffusion model) can reveal cross-linguistic differences in orthographic processing which would otherwise be difficult to detect in standard single-word reading tasks.
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Idioma , Linguística , Humanos , Masculino , Feminino , Leitura , Tempo de Reação , JulgamentoRESUMO
This study investigates the effects of two sublexical variables, syllable frequency, and word length, in the spelling acquisition of novice spellers dealing with a transparent orthography, such as Italian. Two groups of 1 st-grade Italian children were tested respectively after 4 and 8 months of schooling, with a spelling-to-dictation task of single words created ad hoc by manipulating syllable frequency orthogonally (high vs low frequency of the first syllable) and length (short vs long words). The results show that after only four months of schooling, children could offset their difficulty in writing long words by taking advantage of the high frequency of the initial syllable. However, the regularity of Italian spelling makes it easy to capture fine-sized phoneme-to-grapheme units, rendering the syllable effect no longer detectable in more schooled children.
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Idioma , Fonética , Humanos , Criança , Redação , Escolaridade , ItáliaRESUMO
Recent evidence underlines the importance of seeing learning disorders in terms of their partial association (comorbidity). The present concept paper presents a model of reading that aims to account for performance on a naturalistic reading task within a comorbidity perspective. The model capitalizes on the distinction between three independent levels of analysis: competence, performance, and acquisition: Competence denotes the ability to master orthographic-phonological binding skills; performance refers to the ability to read following specific task requirements, such as scanning the text from left to right. Both competence and performance are acquired through practice. Practice is also essential for the consolidation of item-specific memory traces (or instances), a process which favors automatic processing. It is proposed that this perspective might help in understanding surface dyslexia, a reading profile that has provoked a prolonged debate among advocates of traditional models of reading. The proposed reading model proposes that surface dyslexia is due to a defective ability to consolidate specific traces or instances. In this vein, it is a "real" deficit, in the sense that it is not due to an artifact (such as limited exposure to print); however, as it is a cross-domain defect extending to other learning behaviors, such as spelling and math, it does not represent a difficulty specific to reading. Recent evidence providing initial support for this hypothesis is provided. Overall, it is proposed that viewing reading in a comorbidity perspective might help better understand surface dyslexia and might encourage research on the association between surface dyslexia and other learning disorders.
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Learning skills (as well as disorders) tend to be associated; however, cognitive models typically focus either on reading, spelling or maths providing no clear basis for interpreting this phenomenon. A recent new model of learning cognitive skills proposes that the association among learning skills (and potentially the comorbidity of learning disorders) depends in part from the individual ability to consolidate instances (taken as a measure of rate of learning). We examined the performance of typically developing fifth graders over the acquisition of a novel paper-and-pencil task that could be solved based on an algorithm or, with practice, with reference to specific instances. Our aim was to establish a measure of individual rate of learning using parameters envisaged by the instance theory of automatization by Logan and correlate it to tasks requiring knowledge of individual items (e.g., spelling words with an ambiguous transcription) or tasks requiring the application of a rule or an algorithm (e.g., spelling non-words). The paper-and-pencil procedure yielded acquisition curves consistent with the predictions of the instance theory of automatization (i.e., they followed a power function fit) both at a group and an individual level. Performance in tasks requiring knowledge of individual items (such as doing tables or the retrieval of lexical representations) but not in tasks requiring the application of rules or algorithms (such as judging numerosity or spelling through sublexical mapping) was significantly predicted by the learning parameters of the individual power fits. The results support the hypothesis that an individual dimension of "ability to consolidate instances" contributes to learning skills such as reading, spelling, and maths, providing an interesting heuristic for understanding the comorbidity across learning disorders.
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In the present study, we explored the unique contribution of reading accuracy, reading fluency and linguistic comprehension within the frame of Simple View of Reading (SVR). The experimental sample included 118 3rd to 5th grade children learning Italian, a language with a highly regular orthography. We adopted a flexible method of analysis, i.e., the Network Analysis (NA), particularly suited for exploring relations among different domains and where the direct relations between a set of intercorrelated variables is the main interest. Results indicated an independent and unique contribution of syntactic comprehension skills as well as reading fluency and reading accuracy in the comprehension of a written text. The decoding measures were not directly associated with non-verbal reasoning and the latter was not directly associated with reading comprehension but was strongly related to oral syntactic comprehension. Overall, the pattern of findings is broadly consistent with the predictions of SVR and underscores how, in an orthographically regular language, reading fluency and reading accuracy as well as oral comprehension skills directly influence reading comprehension. Data are discussed in a cross-linguistic perspective. Implications for education and rehabilitation are also presented.
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The author wishes to make an erratum to the published version of the paper [...].
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Introduction: Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) suffer from several neurocognitive deficits. We investigated the cognitive and socio-cognitive profiles of patients with severe OSA, controlling for potentially relevant mediating variables (i.e. age, body-mass index, cognitive reserve and depression). Moreover, we studied the neuropsychological profile of a high-risk OSA phenotype characterized by severe OSA and severe nocturnal hypoxemia.Method: We assessed 29 previously untreated severe OSA patients with a mean age of 55.6 (± 9.9 years) and a mean apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) of 53.1 (± 17.4). A control group of 34 healthy participants was also enrolled. Participants completed an extensive neuropsychological battery that included social cognition, a relatively new investigation area among OSA patients.Data analysis: Data were analyzed with a Bayesian approach. Specifically, Bayesian ANCOVA was used to investigate whether the grouping variable could predict test performance. Age, body-mass index, cognitive reserve and state of depression were added as covariates to the null model to weight the effects of these potential confounding factors. Three groups were analyzed: healthy controls (H), OSA with severe apnea and severe nocturnal oxygen desaturation (D+), and OSA with severe apnea non-desaturators (D-). Performances on the various neuropsychological tests were treated as the dependent variables.Results: The results indicate that non-verbal reasoning, the theory of mind skills, and mental shifting ability were impaired in OSA patients. Patients with severe nocturnal hypoxemia underperformed compared to patients with the same severity of apnea but non-desaturators. Additionally, we observed a trend toward a worse performance among OSA desaturator patients in the following abilities: constructional ability, short term verbal memory, phonological fluency, and the ability to inhibit automatic and dominant responses.Conclusion: The data suggest a key role of hypoxemia in affecting cognitive functioning in OSA patients. Executive functions and the concomitant involvement of social cognition are particularly affected.
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Disfunção Cognitiva , Apneia Obstrutiva do Sono , Teorema de Bayes , Cognição , Disfunção Cognitiva/complicações , Humanos , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Testes Neuropsicológicos , Polissonografia , Apneia Obstrutiva do Sono/complicaçõesRESUMO
Background. Skill learning (e.g., reading, spelling and maths) has been predominantly treated separately in the neuropsychological literature. However, skills (as well as their corresponding deficits), tend to partially overlap. We recently proposed a multi-level model of learning skills (based on the distinction among competence, performance, and acquisition) as a framework to provide a unitary account of these learning skills. In the present study, we examined the performance of an unselected group of third- to fifth-grade children on standard reading, spelling, and maths tasks, and tested the relationships among these skills with a network analysis, i.e., a method particularly suited to analysing relations among different domains. Methods. We administered a battery of reading, spelling, and maths tests to 185 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade children (103 M, 82 F). Results. The network analysis indicated that the different measures of the same ability (i.e., reading, spelling, and maths) formed separate clusters, in keeping with the idea that they are based on different competences. However, these clusters were also related to each other, so that three nodes were more central in connecting them. In keeping with the multi-level model of learning skills, two of these tests (arithmetic facts subtest and spelling words with ambiguous transcription) relied heavily on the ability to recall specific instances, a factor hypothesised to underlie the co-variation among learning skills. Conclusions. The network analysis indicated both elements of association and of partial independence among learning skills. Interestingly, the study was based on standard clinical instruments, indicating that the multi-level model of learning skills might provide a framework for the clinical analysis of these learning skills.
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The study examines statistical learning in the spelling of Italian children with dyslexia and typically developing readers by studying their sensitivity to probabilistic cues in phoneme-grapheme mappings. In the first experiment children spelled to dictation regular words and words with unpredictable spelling that contained either a high- or a low-frequency (i.e., typical or atypical) sound-spelling mappings. Children with dyslexia were found to rely on probabilistic cues in writing stimuli with unpredictable spelling to a greater extent than typically developing children. The difficulties of children with dyslexia on words with unpredictable spelling were limited to those containing atypical mappings. In the second experiment children spelled new stimuli, that is, pseudowords, containing phonological segments with unpredictable mappings. The interaction between lexical knowledge and reliance on probabilistic cues was examined through a lexical priming paradigm in which pseudowords were primed by words containing related typical or atypical sound-to-spelling mappings. In spelling pseudowords, children with dyslexia showed sensitivity to probabilistic cues in the phoneme-to-grapheme mapping but lexical priming effects were also found, although to a smaller extent than in typically developing readers. The results suggest that children with dyslexia have a limited orthographic lexicon but are able to extract regularities from the orthographic system and rely on probabilistic cues in spelling words and pseudowords.
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Dislexia , Leitura , Criança , Humanos , Itália , Idioma , FonéticaRESUMO
In a previous study (Zoccolotti et al., 2020) we examined reading, spelling, and maths skills in an unselected group of 129 Italian children attending fifth grade by testing various cognitive predictors; results showed a high degree of predictors' selectivity for each of these three behaviors. In the present study, we focused on the specificity of the predictors by performing cross-analyses on the same dataset; i.e., we predicted spelling and maths skills based on reading predictors, reading based on maths predictors and so on. Results indicated that some predictors, such as the Orthographic Decision and the Arithmetic Facts tests, predicted reading, spelling and maths skills in similar ways, while others predicted different behaviors but only for a specific parameter, such as fluency but not accuracy (as in the case of RAN), and still others were specific for a single behavior (e.g., Visual-auditory Pseudo-word Matching test predicted only spelling skills). To interpret these results, we propose a novel model of learning skills separately considering factors in terms of competence, performance and acquisition (automatization). Reading, spelling and calculation skills would depend on the development of discrete and different abstract competences (accounting for the partial dissociations among learning disorders reported in the literature). By contrast, overlap among behaviors would be accounted for by defective acquisition in automatized responses to individual "instances"; this latter skill is item specific but domain independent. Finally, performance factors implied in task's characteristics (such as time pressure) may contribute to the partial association among learning skills. It is proposed that this new model may provide a useful base for interpreting the diffuse presence of comorbidities among learning disorders.
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Excessive daytime sleepiness is a frequent condition among children and adolescents that may lead to several and significant daytime consequences, including impaired neurocognitive skills and scholastic performance. Here, we evaluated in one hundred and ninety-one unselected primary school children, the relationship between sleepiness and a wide range of cognitive and academic skills through a standardized neuropsychological test battery. In order to assess the statistical relationship, we performed a partial least squares path modelling, a non-parametrical approach which combined a model of paths between latent variables and the coefficients between indicators and dimensions. Results were validated through the bootstrap approach and suggest that sleepiness is not associated with all cognitive and scholastic abilities, but only with those relying on verbal abilities and complex cognitive functions (i.e., reading comprehension, oral/syntactic comprehension, spelling, and mathematic skills). Our data suggest the idea that sleepiness in children is associated mostly with "higher" (mainly verbal) cognitive function(s), while the visuospatial domain was not affected.
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We examined reading, spelling, and mathematical skills in an unselected group of 129 Italian fifth graders by testing various cognitive predictors for each behaviour. As dependent variables, we measured performance in behaviours with a clear functional value in everyday life, such as reading a text, spelling under dictation and doing mental and written computations. As predictors, we selected cognitive dimensions having an explicit relation with the target behaviour (called proximal predictors), and prepared various tests in order to select which task had the best predictive power on each behaviour. The aim was to develop a model of proximal predictors of reading (speed and accuracy), spelling (accuracy) and maths (speed and accuracy) characterized by efficacy also in comparison to the prediction based on general cognitive factors (i.e., short-term memory, phonemic verbal fluency, visual perceptual speed, and non-verbal intelligence) and parsimony, pinpointing the role of both common and unique predictors as envisaged in the general perspective of co-morbidity. With one exception (reading accuracy), the proximal predictors models (based on communality analyses) explained a sizeable amount of variance, ranging from 27.5% in the case of calculation (accuracy) to 48.7% of reading (fluency). Models based on general cognitive factors also accounted for some variance (ranging from 6.5% in the case of spelling to 19.5% in the case of reading fluency) but this was appreciably less than that explained by models based on the hypothesized proximal predictors. In general, results confirmed the efficacy of proximal models in predicting reading, spelling and maths although they offered only limited support for common predictors across different learning skills; namely, performance in the Orthographic Decision test entered as a predictor of both reading and spelling indicating that a single orthographic lexicon may account for performance in reading and spelling. Possible lines of research to expand on this approach are illustrated.
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Comorbidade , Matemática , Leitura , Redação , Criança , Cognição , Deficiências do Desenvolvimento/epidemiologia , Deficiências do Desenvolvimento/fisiopatologia , Feminino , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) suffer from several neurocognitive disturbances. One of the neuropsychological processes most investigated in OSA patients is attention, but the results have been controversial. Here, we update the attention profile of OSA patients with the final aim to improve attention assessment, with a possible impact on clinical and medical-legal practices, in terms of which attention subdomains and parameters need consideration and which one is a high-risk OSA phenotype for attention dysfunctions. METHOD: For this purpose, we assessed 32 previously untreated OSA patients (26 men and 6 women) under 65 years of age (mean age 53.2 ± 7.3; mean education level 10.4 ± 3.4 years) suffering from moderate to severe sleep apnea and hypopnea (mean apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) 45.3 ± 22.9, range 16.1-69.6). A control group of 34 healthy participants matched with OSA patients for age, education level, and general cognitive functioning were also enrolled. The OSA patients and healthy participants were tested through an extensive computerized battery (Test of Attentional Performance, TAP) that evaluated intensive (i.e., alertness and vigilance) and selective (i.e., divided and selective) dimensions of attention and returned different outcome parameters (i.e., reaction time, stability of performance, and various types of errors). Data analysis: The data were analyzed by ANCOVA which compared the speed and accuracy performance of the OSA and control participants (cognitive reserve was treated as a covariate). The possible mechanisms underlying attention deficits in OSA patients were examined through correlation analysis among AHI, oxygenation parameters, sleepiness scores, and TAP outcomes and by comparing the following three phenotypes of patients: severe OSA and severe nocturnal desaturators (AHI++D+), severe OSA nondesaturators (AHI++D-), and moderate OSA nondesaturators (AHI+D-). RESULTS: The results suggest that the OSA patients manifest deficits in both intensive and selective attention processes and that reaction time (RT) alone is ineffective for detecting and characterizing their problems, for which error analysis and stability of performance also have to be considered. Patients with severe OSA and severe hypoxemia underperformed on alertness and vigilance attention subtests. CONCLUSIONS: The data suggest the importance of evaluating attention deficits among OSA patients through several parameters (including performance instability). Moreover, the data suggest a multifaceted mechanism underlying attention dysfunction in OSA patients.
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INTRODUCTION: It is well known that a difficulty in forming lexical representations is a strong predictor of reading and spelling difficulties even after controlling for the effects of other cognitive skills. Our study had two main interrelated aims. First, we wanted to examine whether the ability to learn new written words (lexical learning) varies as a function of the orthographic consistency of the language of the learner. Second, we wanted to evaluate the cognitive abilities involved in orthographic lexical learning and whether they differed as a function of language consistency. METHOD: 163 Italian children and 128 English children performed a lexical learning task as well as tasks assessing several cognitive skills potentially related to the ability to establish orthographic representations. RESULTS: We found that children learning an orthographic inconsistent orthography (English) were better able to learn novel written words presented in association with pictures than children learning a consistent orthography (Italian). This was true for both younger and older primary school children and also when children were matched for school grade. Lexical learning may be better in English children because the many irregularities of this language promote storing in memory whole-word representations and processing larger orthographic units. In Italian, instead, reading can be accomplished successfully on the basis of grapheme-phoneme conversion rules and on processing smaller orthographic units. This interpretation was supported by the pattern of cognitive skills associated with lexical learning skills in the two languages. Variations in lexical learning were explained by spatial visual memory and phonological awareness tasks in both languages, but phonological STM explained further variance in Italian, while a task tapping visuo-attentional capacity explained further variance in English. CONCLUSION: Learning a language with inconsistent orthography is associated with better lexical learning skills in children at different stages of primary school; the pattern of cognitive skills associated with lexical learning skills is also partially modulated by orthographic consistency.