Which skills underlie French-speaking children's lexical spelling acquisition in elementary school? Insight from a cross-sectional exploratory network study from Grade 1 to Grade 5.

Learning to spell in an inconsistent orthographic system is a true challenge for primary school children. Previous empirical studies have highlighted three main skills involved in this learning process: phonological skills, morphological skills, and children's sensitivity to graphotactic regularities. However, the literature shows contradictions in the exact nature of the contribution of each skill at different stages of the learning process. So, the aim of our study was to test the contribution of this set of skills in the acquisition of lexical spelling as a function of children's grade level. For this purpose, we assessed these dimensions in a cross-sectional sample of 1101 French-speaking children from Grade 1 to Grade 5. The analyses were conducted using data-driven exploratory network modeling. The results showed (a) a predominant role of phonological skills at the beginning of learning, which tends to decrease with advancing schooling; (b) an increasing contribution of morphological skills from Grade 1 to Grade 5 with a drop in Grade 4, which is the only contribution that continues to increase in Grade 5; and (c) a contribution of the sensitivity to graphotactic regularities that tends to be stable until Grade 4 before decreasing in Grade 5. Our findings show the importance of all three skills in a dynamic process in learning to spell. The implications of these results are discussed in light of the integration of multiple patterns model of learning to spell.

Phonological decoding and morpho-orthographic decomposition: Complementary routes during learning to read.

We examined the reliance on phonological decoding and morpho-orthographic decomposition strategies in developing and skilled readers of French. A lexical decision experiment was conducted where the critical stimuli were four types of nonwords, all derived from the same base word, such as the French word visage (face) in the following examples: (a) pseudo-homophone (PsH) nonwords (e.g., visaje), (b) orthographic controls for PsH nonwords (e.g., visape), (c) pseudo-morphemic (PsM) nonwords (e.g., visageable), and (d) orthographic controls for PsM nonwords (e.g., visagealle, where alle is not a suffix in French). Responses to PsH and PsM nonwords and their controls were studied in three groups of school children (Grades 1, 2, and 5) and one group of skilled adult readers. PsH interference effects (i.e., more errors to PsH nonwords than to the corresponding controls) decreased during reading acquisition to become nonsignificant in skilled readers. Interestingly, the opposite pattern was seen in PsM interference effects (also measured in terms of accuracy), which were already significant in Grade 1 and increased during reading development to reach their maximum in skilled readers. These results point toward opposing learning trajectories in the use of phonological and morphological information when learning to silently read for meaning.

Screening for Dyslexia in University Students: a Standardized Procedure Based on Conditional Inference Trees.

OBJECTIVE: The focus of this study is on providing tools to enable researchers and practitioners to screen for dyslexia in adults entering university. The first aim is to validate and provide diagnostic properties for a set of seven tests including a 1-min word reading test, a 2-min pseudoword reading test, a phonemic awareness test, a spelling test, the Alouette reading fluency test, a connected-text reading fluency test, and the self-report Adult Reading History Questionnaire (ARHQ). The second, more general, aim of this study was to devise a standardized and confirmatory procedure for dyslexia screening from a subset of the initial seven tests. We used conditional inference tree analysis, a supervised machine learning approach to identify the most relevant tests, cut-off scores, and optimal order of test administration. METHOD: A combined sample of 60 university students with dyslexia (clinical validation group) and 65 university students without dyslexia (normative group) provided data to determine the diagnostic properties of these tests including sensitivity, specificity, and cut-off scores. RESULTS: Results showed that combinations of four tests (ARHQ, text reading fluency, phonemic awareness, pseudoword reading) and their relative conditional cut-off scores optimize powerful discriminatory screening procedures for dyslexia, with an overall classification accuracy of approximately 90%. CONCLUSIONS: The novel use of the conditional inference tree methodology explored in the present study offered a way of moving toward a more efficient screening battery using only a subset of the seven tests examined. Both clinical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Tracking reading skills and reading-related skills in dyslexia before (age 5) and after (ages 10-17) diagnosis.

This study had three goals: to examine the stability of deficits in the phonological and lexical routes in dyslexia (group study), to determine the prevalence of dyslexia profiles (multiple-case study), and to identify the prediction of phonemic segmentation and discrimination skills before reading acquisition on future reading level. Among a group of 373 non-readers seen at age 5, 38 students were subsequently diagnosed as either consistent dyslexic readers (18 DYS) or consistent typical readers (20 TR). Their phonological and lexical reading skills were assessed at ages 10 and 17 and their phonemic segmentation and discrimination skills at age 5. In comparison with TR of the same chronological age (CA-TR), individuals with dyslexia demonstrated an impairment of the two reading routes, especially of the phonological reading route. In the comparison with younger TR (age 10) of the same reading level (RL-TR), only a deficit of the phonological route is observed. In the multiple-case study, the comparisons with CA-TR showed a prevalence of mixed profiles and very few dissociated profiles, whereas the comparison with RL-TR resulted mostly in two profiles depending on the measure: a phonological profile when accuracy was used and a delayed profile when speed was used. In addition, the correlations between early phonemic segmentation and discrimination skills (age 5) and later reading skills (age 17) were significant, and in the group of individuals with dyslexia, early phonemic segmentation skills significantly predicted these later reading skills. Phonological reading deficits are persistent and mainly caused by early phonemic impairments.

What's morphology got to do with it: Oral reading fluency in adolescents with dyslexia.

Individuals with dyslexia often present phonological difficulties, ultimately impacting their reading and writing. Nevertheless, an individual with dyslexia may circumvent these difficulties through a reliance on linguistic units with more consistent spellings, such as morphemes. The increased use of morphological information by individuals with dyslexia has been argued to be a form of compensation. However, the contribution of morphological skills to reading fluency is still unclear. In this study, French adolescents with and without dyslexia were assessed on their morphological awareness and processing skills, along with reading fluency. Morphological awareness was assessed with a suffixation decision task, while a primed lexical decision task was used to assess morphological processing. Primes shared four possible relationships with the targets: morphological, semantic, orthographic, or unrelated. Group differences were not found for morphological awareness. In contrast, the group of adolescents with dyslexia showed a greater benefit of morphological priming. A continuous approach where reading fluency is seen as a broad spectrum was then used for future analyses. Benefits from morphological and orthographic priming were found to be inversely related to reading fluency. Morphological processing was found to be relatively high for individuals with low reading fluency proficiency, which suggests its use as a compensatory strategy in this population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

E-book reading hinders aspects of long-text comprehension for adults with dyslexia.

Developmental dyslexia is a long-lasting reading deficit that persists into adulthood. In spite of many difficulties, some adults with dyslexia reach levels of reading comprehension similar to those of unimpaired readers and successfully study at university. While digital technologies offer many potential tools to facilitate reading, there are differences between printed books and e-books, particularly regarding the interaction between the reader and the text (paratextual cues). This study used long-text reading to investigate (1) different aspects of reading comprehension skills (literal and inferential processes, location of events within a story, and reconstruction of the plot) among university students with dyslexia and (2) the impact of e-book reading on reading comprehension in this population. Thirty adults with dyslexia and 30 matched skilled readers read the same text presented from a printed book and an e-book (Amazon Kindle). Questions were open-ended and both questions and answers used oral format. Results showed that with the printed book, dyslexic adults performed similarly to skilled readers in both literal and inferential reading comprehension tasks. Moreover, they performed at the same level or higher than skilled readers in tasks assessing spatiotemporal aspects of reading (localization of events and plot reconstruction). Conversely, with the e-book reader, the dyslexic adults were outperformed by skilled readers both in literal and spatiotemporal comprehension tasks. These results suggest that reading from an e-book hinders some aspects of reading comprehension for adults with dyslexia. However, when reading a printed book without time pressure, university students with dyslexia performed as well as, or better than, non-impaired readers on some measures of reading comprehension. Therefore, digital reading devices might not always be advantageous to them.

[The eb2® dummy, a therapeutic patient education tool in ENT surgery]. / Un mannequin comme outil d'éducation thérapeutique en chirurgie ORL.

The day-to-day management and support of patients undergoing a total laryngectomy has led multi-disciplinary nursing teams to create a therapeutic patient education programme aiming to improve the quality of care and the autonomy of these people. In this context, the eb2® dummy is an essential tool.