Assessment and characterization of reading disorders and dyslexia in Portuguese children and adults

Funder

Organizational Unit

Publications

Preditores da leitura ao longo da escolaridade: alterações dinâmicas no papel da consciência fonológica e da nomeação rápida

Publication . Reis, Alexandra; Faísca, Luís; Castro, S. L.; Petersson, Karl Magnus

A aquisição da leitura envolve múltiplas aprendizagens, desde o contacto inicial com o alfabeto até ao momento em que a criança se torna apta a ler correcta e fluentemente. Reportamos aqui os principais resultados de um estudo transversal com alunos do primeiro ciclo (N = 568) em que avaliámos a relação entre a exactidão e velocidade da leitura com capacidades de processamento fonológico, nomeação rápida, conhecimento letra - s om e vocabulário. Verificámos que apesar de a consciência fonológica ser o preditor mais importante da exactidão e fluência da leitura, o seu peso decresce à medida que a escolaridade aumenta; simultaneamente, dá - se o aumento do contributo de variáveis ass ociadas ao automatismo e reconhecimento lexical. Concluímos que ao longo da aprendizagem se dá uma alteração dinâmica dos processos cognitivos subjacentes à leitura, em que a criança passa de uma leitura assente em processos sub - lexicais para uma leitura r ecorrendo maciçamente ao reconhecimento ortográfico das palavras.

2010Journal article

Open Access

Object naming in dyslexic children: more than a phonological deficit

Publication . Araújo, Susana; Faísca, Luís; Bramão, Inês; Inácio, Filomena; Petersson, Karl Magnus; Reis, Alexandra

In the present study, the authors investigate how some visual factors related to early stages of visual-object naming modulate naming performance in dyslexia. The performance of dyslexic children was compared with 2 control groups—normal readers matched for age and normal readersmatched for reading level—while performing a discrete naming task in which color and dimensionality of the visually presented objects were manipulated. The results showed that 2-dimensional naming performance improved for color representations in control readers but not in dyslexics. In contrast to control readers, dyslexics were also insensitive to the stimulus’s dimensionality. These findings are unlikely to be explained by a phonological processing problem related to phonological access or retrieval but suggest that dyslexics have a lower capacity for coding and decoding visual surface features of 2-dimensional representations or problems with the integration of visual information stored in long-term memory.

2011Journal article

Restricted

Component processes subserving rapid automatized naming in dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers

Publication . Araújo, Susana; Inácio, Filomena; Francisco, Ana; Faísca, Luís; Petersson, Karl Magnus; Reis, Alexandra

The current study investigated which time components of rapid automatized naming (RAN) predict group differences between dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers (matched for age and reading level), and how these components relate to different reading measures. Subjects performed two RAN tasks (letters and objects), and data were analyzed through a response time analysis. Our results demonstrated that impaired RAN performance in dyslexic readers mainly stem from enhanced inter-item pause times and not from difficulties at the level of post-access motor production (expressed as articulation rates). Moreover, inter-item pause times account for a significant proportion of variance in reading ability in addition to the effect of phonological awareness in the dyslexic group. This suggests that non-phonological factors may lie at the root of the association between RAN inter-item pauses and reading ability. In normal readers, RAN performance was associated with reading ability only at early ages (i.e. in the reading-matched controls), and again it was the RAN inter-item pause times that explain the association.

2011Journal article

Open Access