H860 Reading Difficulties

1. H860 Reading Difficulties 3 times exceptional!! Week 3 Developmental Dyslexia I: The Phonological Representations Hypothesis

2. Today’s session • The theory bit • Break • The practice bit

3. Recap from last week • For a child to learn to read, a lot of precursors have to be in place… • Early language development appears to be important, though there is no one obvious predictor of reading success

4. Dyslexia: A Phonological Difficulty

5. What is Phonological Processing? • Refers to the child’s ability to use phonological information – in particular, the sound structure of oral language – to process oral and written language • Predicts reading acquisition • Most widely recognized locus of deficit in developmental dyslexia • Three kinds of phonological processing

6. Phonological Awareness • Refers to a child’s awareness of and access to the sound structure of oral language • Progresses from awareness of words to syllables to onsets/rimes to phonemes • Required for systematic application of the alphabetic code

7. How Is Your Phonological Awareness? • Say flimrix without /flim/ • Say jopfrad without /frad/ • Say sornch without /ch/ • Say stipnir without /t/ • Say sflummy without /l/ • Say tropunwax without /pun/ • Say belaxidrous without /k/ • Say shalopiniwen without /pi/

8. Phonological Memory • Refers to the child’s ability to code information phonologically for temporary storage in working memory. • Relies on the phonological loop – the phonological store containing the most recent 2 seconds of phonological information, as well as information in long-term memory (see work by Sue Gathercole)

9. How Is Your Phonological Memory? • zep dax • nich lav gup • steck ruv poll nost • poll zep gup ruv nich • lav dax nost ruv steck zep • gup ruv lav dax nost steck poll • nich zep steck ruv dax gup nost gup

10. Rapid Naming as Phonological Processing There is some disagreement about what tests of rapid naming assess, questioning the construct validity of these measures. According to the CTOPP manual, “rapid naming of objects, colors, digits, or letters requires efficient retrieval of phonological information from long-term or permanent memory” (p. 6). Young readers must efficiently retrieve sounds associated with letters, common letter segments, and whole words. If phonological codes cannot be retrieved efficiently, decoding will be slow and effortful.

11. How Is Your Rapid Naming? Medicine Law Design Government Public Health

13. Where to begin (generally) • Working with real words is easier than working with nonsense words • Dealing with bigger chunks is easier than dealing with isolated sounds • Choosing is easier than producing • Beginnings are easier than endings/middles • Deleting sounds is easier than adding or substituting • Blending is easier than segmenting

14. What is the common denominator?

15. Phonological Representation Hypothesis of Dyslexia phonological representations of lexical items are under-specified, “fuzzy” semantic representation phonological representation phonological representation motor programme

16. OK, but… • How does a child develop a well-specified phonological representation? • What is the role of auditory processing? • Different languages have different phonological systems – what are the implications for dyslexia? • How has the phonological representations hypothesis informed remediation?

17. How does a child develop a well-specified representation? • Infants have early-emerging perceptual biases e.g. to mothers’ voice, rhythm of language, categorical perception • Early input allows statistical learning and enhanced sensitivity to phonological contrasts of language • Infants begin to segment words from speech stream around 7-8 months (Jusczyk & Aslin)

18. But it takes a while for word-learning to be able to fully utilize the infant’s perceptual sensitivities…

19. Stager and Werker 8 months - infants can perceptually differentiate bih vs. dih, but fail in ‘switch procedure’ 17 months – success at switch task Infant should look longer/be surprised

20. Important factors 1. Developmental pressure for segmental specificity as acquire vocabulary (present in all languages) 2. Phonological factors such as phonological neighborhood density and its characteristics in different languages

21. Developmental pressure for segmental specificityas acquire vocabulary (present in all languages) (after e.g., Walley & Metsala, 1998) Phase 1: Spoken words have holistic representations Phase 2: Children represent syllabic segments Phase 3: Children represent onsets and rimes Phase 4: Full phonemic representation develops

22. Phonological factors such as phonological neighborhood density and its characteristics in different languages Logically, there are 3 types of neighbor for CVC words: cot - cop: onset-vowel neighbor (OVN) cot- cat: consonant neighbor (CN) cot - hot: rime neighbor (RN) >> lots of RN = rime well-specified? >> lots of OVN = OV well-specified?

23. Phonological Neighborhoods COOK: 17 neighbors rime = 9 could look kick.. book.. COT: 49 neighbors rime = 24 cop cat hot got cock kit lot not cog kite dot what cod curt rot yacht con.. cute.. jot pot shot scot..

24. Will children show better performance in rhyme tasks when words are from dense RN?

25. Further questions • How does a child develop a well-specified phonological representation? • What is the role of auditory processing? • Different languages have different phonological systems – what are the implications for dyslexia? • How has the phonological representations hypothesis informed remediation?

26. Phonological Representation Hypothesis of Dyslexia phonological representations of lexical items are under-specified, “fuzzy” semantic representation phonological representation phonological representation motor programme

27. Why does it matter in the classroom whether the trouble-spot is auditory or phonological?

28. Note the auditory processing jury is still out… Rosen, S. (2003). Auditory processing in dyslexia and specific language impairment: is there a deficit? What is its nature? Does it explain anything? Journal of Phonetics, 31, 509-527

29. Further questions • How does a child develop a well-specified phonological representation? • What is the role of auditory processing? • Different languages have different phonological systems – what are the implications for dyslexia? • How has the phonological representations hypothesis informed remediation?

30. Development of Phonological Awareness: Language Universal? syllable - onset/rime - phoneme window win dow street str eet street /s/ /t/ /r/ /i/ /t/

31. Tapping Task: English vs Italian

32. Reading and spelling acquisition (phoneme level) (language specific?) Speech-reading eg, lip shape (language universal?) PHONOLOGICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF WORDS Vocabulary size and rate of expansion (language universal?) Linguistic factors eg, sonority profile (language specific?) Speech processing skills (input and output) (language universal?) Word frequency/ familiarity/ age of acquisition (language universal?) Phonological neighbourhood density (language specific?)

33. Mapping Sounds to Letters:Universal Dilemma, Language Specific Solutions? 1. When children learn to read, they need to learn how sounds are represented by letters 2. The most accessible phonological units to the beginner are ‘large’ ones - syllables, onsets, rimes 3. The most accessible orthographic units are letters, which typically correspond to phonemes (‘small’ units) >> this creates a “mapping dilemma”

34. Mapping Sounds to Letters:Consistent Alphabetic Orthographies 1. Languages like Italian and Spanish have many simple or open syllables (consonant-vowel structure) 2. Here, children with vocabularies segmented at the onset-rime level can easily solve the mapping problem 3. For many words, onsets and rimes = phonemes e.g. gatto (cat) /g/ /a/ /t/ /o/ casa (house) /c/ /a/ /s/ /a/

35. Mapping Sounds to Letters:Consistent Alphabetic Orthographies 4. Coupled with consistent spelling systems, in which the same letters always map to the same phonemes, this reduces the mapping problem considerably e.g. gatto (cat) /g/ /a/ /t/ /o/ G-A-TT-O casa (house) /c/ /a/ /s/ /a/ C-A-S-A

36. Mapping Sounds to Letters:Consistent Alphabetic Orthographies 5. For languages with more complex syllable structures, like German, onset-rime segmentation does not map onto phonemes e.g. Ball /b/ /al/ B - ALL Hand /h/ /and/ H - AND Garten /g/ /ar/ /t/ /en/ G - AR - T - EN However, spelling-sound consistency still eases the mapping problem. Letters consistently predict phonemes.

37. Mapping Sounds to Letters:Inconsistent Alphabetic Orthographies • Inconsistent spelling systems, like English, increase the mapping problem, particularly for langs with complex syllables: - onset-rime segmentation does not map to phonemes - letters map to different phonemes e.g. ball /b/ /al/ B - ALL hand /h/ /and/ H - AND garden /g/ /ar/ /d/ /en/ G - AR - D - EN

38. Orthographic Consistency Languages vary in the degree to which letters have a 1:1 mapping to sound Greek Finnish German Italian Spanish Swedish Dutch Icelandic Norwegian French Portuguese Danish English Implications for learning foreign languages?

39. Effect on phonemic awareness Phoneme counting task at end of Grade 1 % correct Greek (Porpodas) 100 Italian (Cossu et al.) 97 Turkish (Durgunoglu & Oney) 94 German (Wimmer et al.) 92 Norwegian (Hoien et al.) 83 French (Demont & Gombert) 61 English (Perfetti et al.) 65

40. COST A8: Word and Nonword Reading (cvc), Grade 1

41. Profile of Dyslexia across Languages Phonological deficit: usually speed rather than accuracy Poor phonological recoding: nonword reading deficit, extremely slow Poor reading and spelling effortful decoding and poor spelling

42. Nonword Reading: German & Greek“At Risk” beginners (Porpodas, Wimmer)

43. Speed of Nonword Reading in secondsGerman (G2) and Greek (G1)

44. Dyslexia: Cultural Diversity and Biological Unity E. Paulesu, J.-F. Démonet, F. Fazio, E. McCrory, V. Chanoine, N. Brunswick, S. F. Cappa, G. Cossu, M., Habib, C. D. Frith, U. Frith Science, 2001

45. Dyslexia: Cultural Diversity and Biological Unity • in the six groups of normal controls (A) • and in the six groups of dyslexics (B) • (C) The figure shows the brain areas that were significantly more active in all normal compared to all dyslexic readers. E. Paulesu, J.-F. Démonet, F. Fazio, E. McCrory, V. Chanoine, N. Brunswick, S. F. Cappa, G. Cossu, M., Habib, C. D. Frith, U. Frith Science, 2001

46. Further questions • How does a child develop a well-specified phonological representation? • What is the role of auditory processing? • Different languages have different phonological systems – what are the implications for dyslexia? • How has the phonological representations hypothesis informed remediation?

47. Great resources http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/ What Works Clearing House – your one-stop shop for evidence-based practice http://dww.ed.gov/ Doing What Works – translational site

48. Question… “There ain't one single piece of scientific evidence that says that phonics helps dyslexics. In fact scientific research suggests otherwise. If anyone can show me one single research article published in a respected journal that validates the use of phonics to teach dyslexics, I will shave my head.”

49. One answer…

50. 2-6% of all children remain poor readers in spite of the application of intensive programs