A national test of dyslexia.

Different definitions and tests of dyslexia can cause unfairness and make life difficult for people with dyslexia as well as for the professionals. In 2012, the Danish government decided to support the fight against dyslexia. The government issued a public tender for the development of "a standardized, electronically administered test of dyslexia for use […] from primary Grade 3 and up through all educational levels to 5-year university education." The present paper reports from the development of this National Dyslexia Test. The paper focuses on the definition of dyslexia and the composition, reliability, and validity of the test. Data from the development of the test demonstrate the psychometric properties of the test. Reliability was indicated by a high agreement between the two (computer-administered) measures that are part of the test. External convergent validity was indicated by a high agreement between test results and results from prior practice and by agreement between test results and reading comprehension of educational texts. The paper concludes with a discussion of the practical uses and potential issues with the test since its release in 2015.

The long and the short of vowel length perception in Danish.

Danish is a quantity language in which the length of vowels is either short or long. This study investigates vowel length in order to determine the degree to which we can ascribe the conventional categorical tag to vowel quantity perception. In a pilot study (n = 18) the gradual shortening of long vowels was identified as methodologically preferable for deriving stimuli continua, as complete identification functions could be fitted to the mean data. We employed this method to derive stimuli for identification and discrimination experiments (n = 32) that included the words used in the pilot and another word pair. This pair has phonetically similar variation in vowel duration although, due to recent language change, quantity is no longer contrastive. Results from the phonologically contrastive word pairs showed sigmoidal identification functions and discrimination peaks in the middle of the continua, while the identification slope for the non-contrastive pair was approximately linear and there was no clear discrimination peak. These differences show that the perception of speech contrasts is influenced by the linguistic experience of listeners as well as auditory and articulatory factors.

Length effects in pseudo-word spelling: stronger in dyslexic than in non-dyslexic students.

It is often discussed whether dyslexics show a deviant pattern of reading and spelling development when compared to typically developing students, or whether they follow the same pattern as other students, only at markedly slower rate. The present cross-sectional study investigated phonological encoding skills in dyslexic Danish students. We compared dyslexic and non-dyslexic students from grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 and examined whether effects of item length were stronger in the dyslexic groups. Mixed between-within subjects analyses of variance revealed significant interactions between dyslexia status and item length as the dyslexics at all grade levels were more affected by item length than their non-dyslexic peers. A marked developmental delay was apparent as the dyslexic group from grade 9 performed on approximately the same level as the non-dyslexic group from grade 3. Although the overall difference between these two groups was not significant, a significant interaction between dyslexia status and item length remained because the grade 9 dyslexics were more affected by item length than the younger non-dyslexic students. This difference in error profiles suggests a difference in the developmental patterns of dyslexic vs. non-dyslexic students.

Early Identification of Reading Difficulties: A Screening Strategy that Adjusts the Sensitivity to the Level of Prediction Accuracy.

Early screening for reading difficulties before the onset of instruction is desirable because it allows intervention that is targeted at prevention rather than remediation of reading difficulties. However, early screening may be too inaccurate to effectively allocate resources to those who need them. The present study compared the accuracy of early screening before the onset of formal reading instruction with late screening six months into the first year of instruction. The study followed 164 Danish students from the end of Grade 0 to the end of Grade 2. Early screening included measures of phonemic awareness, rapid naming, letter knowledge, paired associate learning, and reading. Late screening included only reading. Results indicated that reading measures improved substantially as predictors over the first six months of Grade 1, to the point where late reading measures alone provided as much information as the early measures combined. In the light of these results and a less than perfect early screening accuracy, a new strategy for screening is introduced and discussed. The strategy proposes multi-point screening with gradually increasing sensitivity to strike a balance between manageable screening procedures and outcomes and early identification of students who are most likely in need of extra resources. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Identification of vowel length, word stress, and compound words and phrases by postlingually deafened cochlear implant listeners.

BACKGROUND: The accurate perception of prosody assists a listener in deriving meaning from natural speech. Few studies have addressed the ability of cochlear implant (CI) listeners to perceive the brief duration prosodic cues involved in contrastive vowel length, word stress, and compound word and phrase identification. PURPOSE: To compare performance in the perception of brief duration prosodic contrasts by CI participants and a control group of normal hearing participants. This study investigated the ability to perceive these cues in quiet and noise conditions, and to identify auditory perceptual factors that might predict prosodic perception in the CI group. Prosodic perception was studied both in noise and quiet because noise is a pervasive feature of everyday environments. RESEARCH DESIGN: A quasi-experimental correlation design was employed. STUDY SAMPLE: Twenty-one CI recipients participated along with a control group of 10 normal hearing participants. All CI participants were unilaterally implanted adults who had considerable experience with oral language prior to implantation. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Speech identification testing measured the participants' ability to identify word stress, vowel length, and compound words or phrases all of which were presented with minimal-pair response choices. Tests were performed in quiet and in speech-spectrum shaped noise at a 10 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Also, discrimination thresholds for four acoustic properties of a synthetic vowel were measured as possible predictors of prosodic perception. Testing was carried out during one session, and participants used their clinically assigned speech processors. RESULTS: The CI group could not identify brief prosodic cues as well as the control group, and their performance decreased significantly in the noise condition. Regression analysis showed that the discrimination of intensity predicted performance on the prosodic tasks. The performance decline measured with the older participants meant that age also emerged as a predictor. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a portrayal of CI recipients' ability to perceive brief prosodic cues. This is of interest in the preparation of rehabilitation materials used in training and in developing realistic expectations for potential CI candidates.

Orthography as a handicap? A direct comparison of spelling acquisition in Danish and Icelandic.

Spelling of cross-linguistically very similar nonwords was compared in 115 Danish and 77 Icelandic children (primarily 3rd and 4th graders). Danish children made more errors than Icelandic children on word medial consonant doublets and on word initial consonant clusters, even when the groups compared were matched on simpler spelling tasks. These results suggest that the acquisition of phonemic encoding skills is slower in "deep" orthography such as Danish than in more "transparent" orthography such as Icelandic. The effect of orthography was expected for consonant doublets because of the relatively more complex sound-letter correspondences in Danish. For consonant clusters, however, sound-letter correspondences are perfectly regular in both languages. The study thus points to the conclusion that even the mastery of regular sound-letter correspondences may be delayed in deep orthography.