reading difficulty

8/14/2019 Reading Difficulty

1/24

Saturday stream 4 Session 09.00 - 11.10 Length 25 minutes

http://www.bdainternationalconference.org/2001/presentations/sat_s4_a_3.

htm

Reading difficulty characteristics in dyslexic and hearing-impairedstudents (in Hebrew)

Ruth Engel and J. Rosenhouse

(1) Dept. of Technology and Science Education, Technion -I.I.T., Haifa 32000Israel (2) , Dept. of General Studies, Technion - I.I.T., Haifa 32000 Israel

[email protected]

Abstract

This study examines reading difficulty characteristics in Hebrew in threereading-impaired populations. Two are groups of dyslexics: 100 readers with

impaired auditory perception and 100 readers with impaired visualperception. The third group comprises 61 readers with deep/severe hearing

impairment. All were elementary schools students in the second to sixthgrades. The subjects were tested with a conventional Hebrew reading test. Itexamined types of reading errors, (e.g., changes of phonetic structure orword content), self-correction in reading, reading speed, sequential/holistic

reading, the effect of reading texts with and without the Hebrew diacriticalvowel signs ("punctuation"), and the effect of meaningful or meaningless text

material on the amount of reading errors. The literature describes distinctionsbetween various kinds of reading disability related to auditory impairment

and visual perception, and the definition of dyslexia as being one category orincluding sub-groups. Our research hypothesis was that similarcharacteristics of reading difficulties would be found amongst auditoryperception-impaired students and hearing-impaired students, and that they

would differ from those of students with impaired visual perception. Ourfindings support this hypothesis. Many of the sub-tests revealed similarity in

the reading difficulties between the hearing impaired students and those withimpaired auditory perception vs. the visually impaired. An unexpected finding

revealed that 4th grade students in all the groups were a special sub-groupin each group. These findings suggest, in accordance with a major researchapproach, that dyslexia should be defined in terms of dyslexia sub-groups

rather than as a single category.

Introduction

Reading difficulties are examined among other features of reading researchin general (Just and Carpenter, 1987, Chall, 1982, Rayner, 1989), and the

study of processes in reading comprehension in particular (see, e.g., Cornoldi
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


2/24

and Oakhill, 1996, Morrow, 1989, Olson, 1994, Perfetti, 1994, Whitney et al.,1995, Rosenhouse et al. 1997, Shanahan and Neuman, 1997). Reading

disability as a primary developmental feature of reading difficulty is examinedin its various aspects, including holistic or sequential reading, types of errorsin reading, reading which involves (or not) the semantic (content) factor,reading rate, etc. Basically, reading disability is defined as a mismatch

between the phonetic and graphic structure of the word. Reading disability ischaracterized in (at least) three different ways: 1) Content, when the reading

error is caused by substituting the word with a synonym in e.g., 'throw/fling';2)Phonology, when the reader changes the phonological structure of the

word as in 'guest/just'; or 3) Form, when the reader wrongly replaces theword with a wrong one which has a similar holistic graphical structure (e.g.,of consonantal roots) 'fighter/fighting'.

The research of reading disability in Hebrew raises language-specific issues.In Hebrew, most of the vowels are not indicated by letters as in the Latin-based alphabet, but by diacritical points and marks . Usually, these marks

are omitted, except in texts for beginning readers and in some special texts(mainly the Bible and poetry) (cf. Glinert, 1989). Thus, reading Hebrew

resembles going in a loop: In most cases, readers can decode the meaning ofa single word by the general context (of the sentence, the topic etc.). Due to

the above, the acquisition of Hebrew reading in the preliminary stagesrequires the support of vowels or "pointing" (i.e., with diacritical vowel marks- hereafter "pointing"), and only later students move on to reading"unpointed" texts. In our examination of the mismatch between the graphic

and phonological structure, we therefore refer also to vowel pronunciation(which actually changes the word), whether or not "pointing" appears in the

text .

Reading disability occurs due to a few reasons among which are the

motivational-emotive factor (Bentin, 1992), the environmental factor(Vernon, 1979), the mental-cognitive factor (Rutter and Yule, 1975), the

psychological-sensory factor (Rudel and Denkla, 1976) and the neuro-developmental factor (Geschwind, 1985). Dyslexia, as a reading impairment,is often attributed to primary neuro-developmental damage. One of thedilemmas in research is defining the dominant neuro-developmental cause

that explains dyslexia (Rahmany, 1990). Significant discussions betweenresearchers revolve around the dominance of auditory or visual perception as

causes of reading disability.

Auditory perception impairment is considered to be a cause for readingdisability (Vernon, 1966), and especially among hearing impaired populations(Just and Carpenter, 1987). Auditory perception, which is involved in the

acquisition of reading skills, is usually related to phonological and phoneticcompetence, to the ability to distinguish between similar speech sounds, toidentify the phonetic structure of the word, and to the competence ingrapheme-phoneme matching (Goswami and Bryant, 1990, Morais et al.

1986, Marschark and Harris, 1996).


3/24

Frith (1985), testing a dyslexic population, found support to the correlationbetween the impairment in auditory perception and auditory discrimination

ability, and between reading disability. Frith (ibid.) examined their auditoryperception ability by tests which required identifying phonetic wordstructures, identifying incomplete words (with deleted letters) and formingwords by joining letters, as well as by pronouncing meaningless (nonsense)

words.

Bradley and Bryant (1983) found that it was possible to expect adequate

reading ability from children with good phonological awareness on the basisof a test for identifying similar sounds. Children with poor phonological

ability, however, were slow and revealed difficulty in reading acquisition.Birch and Belmont (1965), Jorm (1977), Holmes and Peper (1978) and

others support the correlation between reading disabilities and auditoryperceptual impairment.

In most cases, researchers include auditory discrimination ability and

auditory analysis in testing auditory perception of dyslexics (Jorm, 1977). Insuch cases, a dyslexic student reveals difficulty in splitting a word into itscomponents while maintaining, i.e., the sequence of speech sounds in

auditory word completion. Sharan and Sharan (1978) refer to a particularvisual-auditory generalization causing readers to exchange a written word

(whose meaning they know), with another word, e.g., "grass" for "herb", andto split a word into its components (syllables), e.g., "cet" / "faucet".

Correlation between impaired auditory short-term memory and poor readingis also mentioned in Sharony, 1990.

The idea that auditory perception is the dominant reason explaining reading

difficulties has met with opposition by other researchers who suggest visualperception as the dominant reason for dyslexia. According to theseresearchers, due to the impaired visual perception, readers have difficulties

with the holistic perception of the word which they read sequentially. Theirreading errors include changing the order of letters (graphemes) in a word,

or letter (phoneme) deletion and insertion (Kinsbourne and Warrington,1962, Warrington and Rabin, 1971, Warrington and Shallice, 1979,

Bradshaw, 1975).

These findings led to new approaches distinguishing between categories ofreading disability according to the involved perceptual impairment. Instead of

"dyslexia" as one category, sub-groups of dyslexia have been suggested.Boder (1973) for example, distinguishes auditory-phonological dyslexia fromvisual dyslexia. A similar approach is found in Marshall and Newcomb (1973)

and in Shallice and Warrington (1975) who define "deep" (phonemic)dyslexia and "superficial" dyslexia. The "deep" dyslexia is related to the

auditory perceptual impairment, whereas the "superficial" dyslexia relates tothe visual perceptual impairment. The following error types characterize deep

(phonemic) dyslexia (Shallice and Warrington, 1975):


4/24

1. The subject's errors are semantic rather than phonological. S/hesubstitutes the written word by another word related to the content of the

sentence.

2. Word type affects the errors: The subject can read a word better when it

represents an object and not function words (prepositions).

3. The dyslexic subject shows difficulty in reading meaningless words. Frith

(1985) who stresses the perceptual-auditory factor as a cause for readingdifficulties in dyslexics, deals with the problem also from the point of view ofhearing-impaired readers. In his opinion, beyond the argument about readingcomprehension, most of the children gradually move on to holistic reading.

This process is due to the change from a visually distinguished logographicstrategy to a phonological or alphabetic strategy, in which letters are

translated into phonemes since they (the graphemes) represent thephonological system. This phenomenon explains according to Frith (ibid.) the

difficulties of hearing-impaired readers who are usually known to have poor

phonological abilities.

The hearing-impaired person, whether growing in a hearing or in a deaf

home where one or both parents are deaf, was found to have lowerphonological skills than those of the hearing population. Waters and Doehring(1990) found in seven to twenty years old hearing-impaired subjects

difficulty in phonological coding ability, which is one of the abilities examinedin auditory perception functioning in dyslexics. Harris and Beech (1995)

found in hearing-impaired subjects poorer phonemic awareness than inhearing subjects. The same study claims that up to the age of seven years,

the hearing-impaired child hardly relies on phonological coding. Gradually,

with age, the child acquires this skill based on developing "inner language".Evidence for difficulties which characterize hearing-impaired readers alsoexists in other studies (cf. Truax, 1978, Soderbergh, 1985,).

Bellugi (quoted in Geschwind, 1985) presented evidence that deaf children,born in deaf families, acquired sign language at a rate parallel to that of oral

language acquisition in normal hearers. Hence, relying on Geschwind'sdefinition of reading as the ability to "derive meaning from any kind of visual

representation of language" (Geschwind, 1985:198) the hearing-impairedchild is expected to read, as it were, without any difficulty. Still, it has beenfound that reading is the most difficult academic challenge for the hearing-

impaired child (Marschark and Harris, 1996).

DiFrancesca (1972) found that reading skills of hearing-impaired childrenincrease only by 0.2 score per year. Vernon (1972) found that between the

age of 10-16 years, the hearing-impaired student's reading achievementincreases by little more than 0.1 score. Also Alan (1983) and Marschark

(1997) explain this population's reading difficulty as caused by their impairedphonological channel.


5/24

Such findings support the theory about the role of impaired auditoryperception in reading disability and determine the background for the

comparison between two populations with reading disability: dyslexics with agood peripheral hearing system, but whose auditory perception is impaired,and a non-dyslexic hearing-impaired population whose peripheral hearingsystem is impaired. These dilemmas and research findings are the basis of

our present research.

The Assumptions and Aims of the Present Research

Our research examines the assumption that there exist three different typesof reading disabilities related to different types of impaired perception: an

impaired auditory perception, an impaired visual perception, and an impairedperipheral hearing system. Our research assumptions were that if, indeed,

different types of dyslexia (by perception channel) existed, we would find: 1)similar characteristic reading difficulties in subjects with reading disability

due to auditory perception impairment and hearing-impaired subjects, who

suffer from reading difficulties. 2) We expect these impairment types to bedifferent from those of the dyslexic subjects with impaired visual perception.This leads to the major research question in this study: Is it possible to find

in the framework of a comparative study similar characteristics of readingdifficulties in these populations, based on a physiological source, on the one

hand, and on a neuro-developmental (auditory or visual) perceptionimpairment, on the other.

Method of Work

THE SUBJECTS

Three research groups participated in this study, all studying in the 2nd tothe 6th elementary school grades. They were selected from the 2nd grade

up, since in the first grade children usually struggle with basic readingacquisition.

The first group included 20 children per grade, that is, 100 children, whowere diagnosed as dyslexic by the first author and suffered only fromimpaired auditory perception.

The second research group included 53 hearing-impaired students in thesame grades who were diagnosed as having normal visual perception. Thebreakdown of this group by class is as follows: 2nd grade - 8 students; 3rd

grade - 20 students; 4th grade - 11 students; 5th grade - 10 students; 6thgrade - 4 students (see Table 1.). Their hearing impairment was severe or

deep, with a hearing level decrease ranging between 70-115 dB, and most ofthe values ranging between 90-100 dB.

The control group consisted of 100 (20 per grade) dyslexic students (alsodignosed by the first author) who suffered from impaired visual perception.


6/24

The dyslexic groups had received no corrective intervention prior to the tests.The dyslexic children came from Haifa and Northern Israel, as did about half

of the hearing impaired children. The latter were students in an integrativeschool in Haifa. The rest of the hearing impaired students came from variousplaces in the center of Israel, and were tested in the "Shema'" Center for theHearing-Impaired in Tel-Aviv. Some of the hearing-impaired children talked at

a near-normal quality, but others had considerable speaking problems.Therefore, a teacher was always present during the tests, and stopped the

reading whenever an error occurred and specified the error to the observingresearcher. This procedure was not necessary with the dylsexic groups.

The three groups will be henceforth referred to as follows:

Auditory - the dyslexics with auditory perception impairment;

HI - the hearing-impaired group, and

Visual - the dyslexics with visual perception impairment.

PROCEDURE

The subjects who were diagnosed as reading impaired were examined by a

Hebrew diagnosing kit for auditory perception functioning. Following Jorm(1977) and Sharan (1978) we were assisted by the auditory perception tests

included in Kidron (1987) which are accepted for most of the diagnosingtasks in Israel: the auditory discrimination test (based on Wopman adapted

by Hoga), auditory distinction between syllables (following Dar'in) and theauditory classification test (identification of opening, medial and final speech

sounds in a word). The dyslexia diagnosing tests (in the Kidron set, 1987)involve also visual perception functioning tests based on the MVPT test, and

include the examination of shape fixation, distinction of form andbackground, holistic perception, visual sequence and visual memory.

The examination of the students' reading skills included the followingcategories of reading characteristics and difficulty types:

1. Reading meaningful and meaningless text. By this test, a comparisonbetween reading aloud a list of (15) meaningful vs. (15) meaningless (nonce,

artificial) words was done. In this part we compared reading of words withand without meaning by the number of errors made by the subjects duringreading. Each error was marked numerically for scoring and statisticalanalysis as follows (cf. Figure 1):

-1 - In reading meaningful texts there are more errors than in readingmeaningless texts; 0 - In reading meaningful and meaningless texts the

number of errors is the same; 1. 1 - In reading meaningful texts there areless errors than in reading meaningless texts.


7/24

2. Sequential or holistic reading. The length of the passage (ranging between100-189 words) was adapted to the student's grade. The term "sequential"

means a reading technique which takes single graphemes, unit by unit,uniting them only at the end of the word into a sense unit (i.e., a word), e.g.reading the word 'general' as [ge-ne-ra-l]. The term "holistic" refers toreading the word as a whole, relying on its visual pattern. Figure 2(a,b,c)

summarizes the findings.

3. Self-correction in reading. This variable measures the number of

spontaneous stops each child made in order to correct any kind of errors inhis/her reading (aloud). This measure involves the child's control over the

text s/he reads, which requires the use of semantic contextual analysis by anauditory/semantic feedback system.

4. Reading rate. This variable was measured by the number of words readaloud per minute(WPM) as in Engel (1997). The student's reading was

stopped after one minute. The raw numbers of each group were averaged by

groups and by classes (with standard deviations) is shown in Table 2 and inFigure 5.

5. "Pointed" vs. "unpointed" text: Comparison between the effect of readingtexts with or without "pointing". The texts were taken from Engel (1987),and Kidron (1977). The analysis was also done by group and grade, as in the

rest of the variables, and raw results were marked by the following coding(cf. Figure 4(a,b,c)):

-1 - the "pointed" text involves more reading errors;0 - the "pointed" and "unpointed" texts yield the same number of errors;

1 - the "pointed" text involves less reading errors.6. Reading errors: Tests and analysis were made for the following categoriesof reading errors. (See Figure 6 a, b, c):

a - wrong pronunciation of vowels. This is a more or less language specificfeature, since as noted, in Hebrew vowels ("pointing") are not written asconsonant letters, and errors in vowels may change the word (even if

consonants are correctly read).

b - reading errors in suffixes and "b/k/l/m" prefixes (for this term see

endnote iv). c - errors due to the child's changing the visual form of theword; cf. e.g. Hebrew /hitbonen/ '(he) looked at' vs. reading it wrongly as

/hitlonen/ '(he) complained'.

d - change in the auditory form (the sound pattern) of the word; cf. e.g.

Hebrew [he'etik] '(he) copied' vs. reading it as [ekita] (a non-word).

e - change in the content or meaning of the word as a result of the error,

changing it into a totally different word.


8/24

Findings

In this section we summarize mainly verbally the findings of each reading

category. Altogether we had six test variables, three groups of subjects, fivegrades per group, and the interactions amongst them. Due to the large

number of statistical tests which analyze the many different variables bydifferent methods, we do not present numerical tables. Let us note here thatKruskall-Wallis test was used to analyze ordinal distributions (X square) suchas the reading of meaningful/meaningless words, the effect of pointing, and

the holistic/sequential reading style. Two-tailed ANOVA, Wilcoxon, andDuncan tests were used for multi-population comparisons when the variables

were sequential as in, e.g., the reading rate. When the interaction betweenthe variables was significant, one-tailed ANOVA was used.

READING MEANINGFUL/MEANINGLESS TEXT

Inter-grade comparison

The HI group There is no clear evidence that the distribution of the differencein error quantity in reading meaningful or meaningless text changes with

time. That is to say, the distribution is fixed in time (p=0.154). In the 3rd,4th and 6th grades (but not in the 2nd and 5th grades) HI significantly tendto a situation where they make more errors in reading meaningful thanmeaningless words. In the 2nd and 5th grades there is no statistical evidence

for this trend.

The Auditory group The distribution of the difference in reading meaningful

vs. meaningless texts is not fixed throughout the grades (p=0.02). The

contribution of the 4th grade is a major source contributing to this effect, forin this grade there are more reading errors in reading meaningful texts thanmeaningless texts than would be expected by the equal distribution

hypothesis. In all the grades, except in the 4th grade, there is no significantdifference in the errors made in reading meaningful and meaningless texts.In the 4th grade reading meaningful texts raises significantly the rate ofreading errors (p=0.008).

The Visual group There is no clear evidence that the content has a differenteffect along the grades (p=0.10) (in the place test comparison p = 0.48). In

all the grades except in the 4th grade it is possible to say that in readingmeaningful texts there are significantly less errors than in reading

meaningless texts. In the 4th grade this is not significantly evident (p=0.10).

Inter-Group Comparison

Grades 2,4,5: At the 5% level of significance the visual group tends toimprove its reading when the text is meaningful compared to the HI and

Auditory groups. There is no significant difference between the HI and theAuditory groups.


9/24


10/24

group, tends towards the holistic reading style. In addition, the Auditorygroup tends to be significantly more holistic than the Visual group. The HI

and the Auditory groups differ in this respect from the Visual group(p=0.0009).

Third-sixth grade: There is a difference between the groups in reading styledistribution (p=0.001). At the 5% level of significance, there is no differencebetween the HI and the Auditory groups. Each of the HI and the Auditorygroups tend to read in the holistic style more significantly than the Visual

group. Relating to all the grades and inter-group differences, the Auditoryand HI groups read significantly more holistically than the Visual group.

There is no significant difference between the HI and the Auditory group(p=0.22).

SELF CORRECTION IN READING


Self-correction in reading was also examined statistically (cf. Figure 3). Nosignificant difference in the probability to self-correction was found between

groups in the 2nd through 6th grades. The hypothesis that each populationhad a fixed probability to self- correction was not refuted (HI: p=0.206;auditory: p=0.756; visual: p=0.876).

In the HI population the probability for self correction was especially low inthe 3rd grade. Inter-group comparison As to inter-group differences in thistest, at the 5% level of significance this probability is not the same in all the

groups and at least two are different. The probability estimation for self

correction is as follows:

HI: 0.38, Auditory: 0.58, Visual: 0.55

At the 5% level of significance only the difference between the HI and the

Auditory groups is significant (p=0.016). Likewise, there is a significantdifference between both dyslexic groups (together) and the HI (p=0.013). In

both cases, the HI have a lower probability for self-correction. In the 5th and6th grades there was no difference between the three groups at the 5% levelof significance (p=0.792).

READING RATE

In a two-tailed ANOVA examination which was made in order to study theeffect of grades, the studied group and the interaction between group andgrade, we found an interaction at the 5% level of significance (p=0.0001). Inother words, inter-group differences in reading rate depend on the grade.



11/24

In the 2nd grade there is no difference between the populations. In thehigher grades, the number of WPM of the HI increases with the grade. In the

Visual group the increase in reading rate is the most moderate. In theAuditory group the increase is moderate and then, after the 4th grade, theirreading rate becomes equal to that of the HI.

In the 2nd and 4th grades there is no significant difference between thegroups. In the 3rd grade, the HI group has a significantly higher number ofWPM than the Visual or Auditory groups. In the 5th and 6th grades there is

no significant difference between the HI and the Auditory groups, and theVisual group differs significantly from the other two groups.

Inter-group comparison (in WPM)

The HI group In the 2nd grade the reading rate is especially low. It is also

lower than that of the other groups. In the 3rd and 4th grades the number ofwords is equal, and higher than in the 2nd grade. In the 5th and 6th grade,

the average number of WPM is significantly higher than in the lower grades.

The Auditory group The number of WPM in the 4th grade is significantly

different from both the lower and higher grades. In the 5th and 6th gradesthe number of WPM is different from and significantly higher than in the 4thgrade.

The Visual group The number of WPM in the higher grades (4th through 6thgrades) is significantly higher than that of the lower grades (2nd and 3rdgrades).

EFFECT OF READING "POINTED" AND "UNPOINTED" TEXT


The HI group At the 5% level of significance the effect of pointing on thenumber of reading errors is not equal for all the grades. In the 2nd and 6th

grades there were less errors with pointed texts than could be anticipatedaccording to the hypothesis of equal distribution per grade. When the five

grades are examined together, there is no statistical evidence to support thehypothesis that pointing affects the number of errors.

The Auditory group At the 5% level of significance the pointing effect on thenumber of reading errors is not equal for all grades. Two facts contributed to

this finding: In the 2nd grade there were too many cases in which "pointing"helped reading (i.e., less reading errors) and in the 6th grade there were toomany errors in reading "pointed" texts . Throughout the grades there is agrowing tendency to make more errors in "pointed" texts. Apparently

"pointing" interferes with the reading process (cf. Figure 4), although this hasnot been statistically tested.


12/24

In the 2nd grade reading a pointed text decreased significantly the number ofreading errors; in the 3rd and 5th grades there was no statistical evidence

for a difference between reading "pointed" and "unpointed" texts. In the 4thand 6th grades there was statistical evidence that reading "pointed" textsincreased the number of errors. In general, throughout the grades, in thisgroup "pointing" had an interfering factor.

The Visual group There is no statistically significant difference between the2nd through 6th grades in the distribution of the effect of "pointing" on the

errors (p=0.243). In all the grades there are less errors when reading"pointed" texts than "unpointed" texts. In the 2nd and 3rd grades there are

significantly less errors in reading "pointed" texts (p=0.0001, and p=0.0003respectively). The same findings are true for the 5th grade. For the 4th and

the 6th grades there is no statistical evidence of this trend.

Inter-Group Comparison

At the 5% level of significance, in 2nd, 3rd and 5th grades the HIandAauditory groups are similar. The Visual group tends to make significantlyless errors while reading "pointed" texts compared to reading "unpointed"

texts than the HI and Auditory groups. In the 4th grade, at the 5% level ofsignificance, only the difference between the Visual and Auditory groups issignificant in that the Visual group tends to make significantly less errors in

reading "pointed" texts than the Auditory group. There is no significantdifference between the HI and the Visual or Auditory groups in this grade.

In the 6th grade, at the 5% level of significance, there is a significantdifference between the HI and the Auditory group, as well as between the

Auditory and the Visual groups. The Auditory group tends to makesignificantly more errors in reading pointed texts. There is no significantdifference between the HI and the Visual group in this grade.

Considering all grades together at the 5% level of significance, the Visualgroup tends significantly to read "pointed" texts with less errors than the HIand the Auditory groups. There is no significant difference between the HI

and the Auditory groups.

THE TYPES OF READING ERRORS

Inter-grade comparison In both the 2nd and 3rd grades there is a significantinter-group difference in the error type distribution. At the 5% level of

significance all the groups differ: In the HI the most prevalent error types arecategories a, b, c; In the Auditory group the most prevalent error type is

category c; In the Visual group the most prevalent error types are categoriesa, d. In the 2nd grade category no. e does not occur at all in the HI and

Auditory groups. In this grade it is found in only one Visual subject. In the3rd grade of the HI no errors of category d and e occur.


13/24


14/24


15/24

The Auditory group, on the other hand, reads holistically and faster and doesnot dwell on the meaning. It falls, in fact, between the HI and the Visual

groups, since its auditory channel is impaired, but its hearing system isbetter than that of the HI. Therefore, compared to the HI, it has betterlinguistic skills which help it in reading meaningful texts, but not to the sameextent as it helps the Visual group.

Sequential and holistic reading In the 2nd grade all the students use thesequential reading strategy. Later on, the Visual group continues to use this

strategy, while the HI and the Auditory groups move more and more towardsholistic reading. We offer two explanations for this phenomenon, related to

the different kinds of impairment: Normal readers pass on to global readingafter acquiring (seqential) technical reading. Since the Visual group members

have an impaired visual perception channel, which limits their ability toperceive whole elements, these students continue reading in the sequentialstyle. The HI and the Auditory groups, on the other hand, due to theirimpaired auditory perception channel, use a sight-based (visual) reading

technique which is not mediated by speech sounds or generalization ofsounds and graphic symbolization.

Self-correction in reading The findings of this variable refute the hypothesisthat there would be similarity between the auditory and HI groups and

difference between them and the Visual group. The HI tend less than the twoother groups to self correction in reading, but this difference is not

statistically significant. In addition, there is no significant difference in thisrespect in all the grades (i.e., development along years). Up to 5th and 6thgrades, the lowest self-correction rate is that of the HI. This finding is inconformance with the fact that their reading is not semantic, and they do not

rely on the content to correct errors. In the 5th-6th grades there is nosignificant difference between the groups in terms of self-correction. Still, the

HI have the lowest probability for self correction. In this case also we mayexplain this finding by the lack of semantically-supported reading. On the one

hand, this is a feature which characterizes the communication of HI: To alarge extent, they tend to apply technical-automatic reading "oral Hebrew"which they know less well as it may be considered their second languagecompared to Hebrew Sign Language. The fact that in the higher grades there

is no significant difference between the groups could be explained by the factthat the HI, too, begin at this stage to be aided by the semantic component

of the text. They are also probably able to control themselves better than inearlier grades as a result of their maturation and general progress in studies,

including language and literacy. This hypothesis, and whether this trendcontinues later on, should be tested with older subjects.

Reading rate In the 2nd grade, reading rate is similar in all the three groups.This finding matches the sequential reading style of all three groups. In the3rd grade the HI are the fastest readers (in reading aloud). In the 5th and6th grades the reading rate of the HI and the Auditory groups is similar. It

differs, however, from the Visual group, which has the slowest reading rate.


16/24

It should be noted that all the subjects read at a slower rate than theaverage normal readers (Engel, 1997), even after the 2nd grade, which is the

stage when the HI (and the Auditory group) move on to holistic reading. Inthe two dyslexic groups the slow rate can be explained by the combinedeffect of various reading difficulties. The Auditory group cannot use thecontribution of semantic content efficiently, whereas the Visual read

sequentially, which slows down their processing of the material; thus bothgroups lack the reading flow and speed of the normal reader who already

identifies and reads the following word while still processing previous words.

The effect of reading "pointed" text The visual group reads "pointed" texts

better than both the HI and Auditory groups. Between the latter two groupsthere is no significant difference. "Pointing" does not help the HI's reading,

and it actually detracts from the reading quality in the auditory group.Phrased differently: the higher the grade, the more interfering factor"pointing" becomes for the HI.

A likely explanation for the difference between the populations apparentlyinvolves (again) the different reading styles of the groups: The Visual groupreads sequentially, and therefore pays attention to every mark in the written

line; it takes longer to read and process the additional vowel-indicatingmarks, but they do add information to enable better reading. The other two

groups read globally, holistically. In the process of word identification,comparing a word with the existing vocabulary in their long-term memory,

the "pointing" adds more data than needed for processing. This increases theinformation load, and becomes a detracting factor.

Reading errors types Similarity was found between HI and Auditory groups in

that most of their errors relate to the visual form of the word. These groupsdiffer from the Visual group whose main errors involve the word's auditorypattern (sound pattern). It may be possible to explain the type of errors in

the HI and the Auditory groups by the fact that these groups do not havesound mediation and rely mainly on the visual channel in their reading.

Accordingly, they cannot assess fast enough the link between the read letterand its phonological-linguistic meaning, nor do they trace errors in words

through the auditory channel. In contrast, the Visual group is mainly aidedby auditory information, since its visual channel is impaired.

Unlike the Visual and the Auditory groups, the HI have also errors in vowels,

suffixes, and "b,k,l,m" prefixes. Regarding this kind of error we suggest anexplanation linking the structure of the Hebrew language and speech withtheir specific impairment. Due to the use of the Hebrew Sign Language,

which differs in many respects from oral Hebrew, HI children are notsufficiently proficient in the rich morphological structure of Hebrew in the first

grades of school and make morphological errors in both reading andspontaneous speech. They do not always use the "b,k,l,m letters" since these

are not part of the lexemic word indicated by the root consonants. (They arealso morphological, syntactic and semantic elements, i.e., morphemes and


17/24

syntagms with certain meanings, which they do not perceive well enough.)As soon as they identify the written word by its consonantal root letters,

which in Hebrew supply it its basic meaning, they think they understand it(by linguistic and non-linguistic contextual cues) and do not pause to studyits (partly redundant) morphological pattern. Only for the 6th grade we didnot find such errors in the HI group. Maybe at this stage their linguistic

knowledge (expressed in general oral language and literacy) is already moredeeply rooted, so that it may actively contribute to decoding the written text

more than in earlier grades.

Comparison with Shallice and Warrington (1975)

Shallice and Warrington (1975) focused on reading disability and impairedauditory perception and suggested a sub-group of dyslexia, i.e., phonemic

dyslexia. Since our research touches upon this question from a differentaspect, we are comparing here our findings with those of Shallice and

Warrington (1975):

1. These scholars found about 33% semantic errors in their study vs. 66% of the"visual" kind in their subject. Our research seems to support this finding. The

HI (mainly) do not rely on the content and therefore their reading is not

"semantic", and they make many semantic errors; the Auditory group does not

show preference to reading meaningful or nonsense texts, but neverthelessmake also semantic errors. However, the Visual group is significantly

different from both those groups in use of the semantic content of the text

(and closer to the results of Shallice and Warrington (1975)).2. Shallice and Warrington (1975) refuted the hypothesis of "auditory" (sound)

errors in their subject. Our findings corroborate this view regarding the HI

and Auditory groups (and are in contrast with the Visual group's results).

Findings concerning the HI

This study sustains the view that reading is the "most difficult academicchallenge for the hearing impaired" (Marschark and Harris, 1997).We found

that in comparison with the other two populations, which can be defined asreading impaired, the HI group was even weaker. Although its reading rate

was the highest of the three groups, this finding was significant only in the3rd grade. The HI population's reading was the least supported by the

meaning of the text, so that their reading was not semantic, and they were

least prone to self-correction of reading errors, and the types of errors theymade were the most heterogeneous of the three studied groups, andincluded prefixes such as "b,k,l,m" and word suffixes. These difficulties seemto result from the correlation between their reading and language knowledgeexpressed in their speaking skills.

Is the 4th grade special?


18/24

The 4th grade revealed specific features when the parameters and groupsfindings were crossed. These findings include the following:

1. Reading meaningful and nonsense texts: The Auditory group had an increase

of errors when reading meaningful texts. In the other grades of this group

there is no difference between reading meaningful or nonsense texts. As to theVisual group, no significant evidence was found in the 4th grade that in

reading a meaningful text there were less errors compared to the other grades.

2. In the Auditory group: Reading rate in this grade is statistically related neitherto the lower nor to the higher grades.

3. In the 4th grade of the Auditory group "pointing" contributes to the errors,

contrary to the other grades of this group. Also from the point of view ofinter-group differences, in this grade there is significant difference only

between the Visual and the Auditory groups (unlike other reading

characteristics).

4. In the 4th grade of the HI group, there are hardly any visual pattern (category

c) errors. In the other grades almost only visual form errors occur.5. In comparing reading errors of category c and category d in the 4th grade with

these types of errors in the other grades, the HI and Auditory group differ. TheHI and the Visual group, however, do not differ significantly between

themselves, nor do the Auditory and Visual groups differ from each other.

These findings about the 4th grade raise questions as to the origin andexplanation of these differences. Can we consider the dyslexic and HIpopulation at this grade as being in a special developmental stage, at leastconcerning reading skills? Is it in any way related to the fact that the 4th

grade is an important stage of maturation for the child, as implied by thestructure of syllabi for this grade in elementary schools? A possible research

question for further study would, thus, be whether the 4th grade begins anew stage in the development of reading skills among reading-impaired

children as those studied here.

Conclusion

This research studied three groups of children with impairments that lead toreading difficulties. We found differences between the groups with impairedauditory or visual perception. These differences support the approach whichconsiders dyslexia as an "umbrella" term which includes sub-groups of

various kinds of reading impairment. The research revealed typical features

for the reading difficulties of members of each of these groups. Thesedifferences depended both on impairment type and on grade, i.e., the child'sdevelopmental stage. In these respects, the HI and Auditory groups are more

similar to each other than any of them to the Visual group. Our researchhypotheses were thus corroborated.

The HI children were found to have the lowest reading scores among thethree groups. This finding was, in fact, anticipated, since reading acquisition


19/24

problems in HI children are still considered their greatest academicchallenge, which teachers, educators and researchers all over the world have

not solved so far.

The study is relevant to other research topics such as the study of language

problems among HI (with various levels of impairment), the study of readingprocesses in general, development stages of impaired beginning readers, thepassage from the first stage, i.e., technical reading, to higher reading skills,differences between sequential and holistic readers, differences between

reading patterns of male and female readers, etc.

The findings of this research may have implications on intervention manners,

e.g., in the strategies of teaching reading to members of the studiedpopulations. When dealing with Hebrew, for example, one should consider

using "pointing" with impaired visual-perception students even in the highergrades and avoiding the use of "pointed" texts in HI and students with

impaired auditory perception, due to the different reactions to "pointing" in

these populations. It might be also advisable to train members of the HI andthe Auditory groups to read meaningful texts and use "readingcomprehension" techniques, especially in the 4th grade, and meticulously

train sequential reading to members of the HI and Auditory groups in orderto decrease their reading errors. The findings about 4th grade students in the

three groups of our research are very interesting, and deserve a separatefuture study, as do our findings about errors specific to the Hebrew language.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported partly by a Technion VPR grant no. 2001576 for the

Enhancement of Research, and partly by the Ministry of Education.The authors extend their thanks to the hundreds of dyslexic and hearingimpaired children in Haifa and Tel-Aviv, the school principals and Shema' Tel-Aviv director, for their invaluable help in conducting the experiments.

The authors cordially thank Prof. A. Cohen, Head of the Statistical ConsultingLaboratory, at the Technion School of Industrial Engineering and

Management, and especially Dr. O. Barnett, for their help with the statisticalanalysis.

References

Allen, T.E. (1974, 1983) Patterns of academic achievement among hearing

impaired students, in: A.N. Shidroth and M.A. Karchmer (eds.) Deaf Childrenin America, San Diego: Hill Press, 161-206.

Bentin, S. (1992) The effect of learning to read in the first grade on thedevelopment of children's phonological awareness, Megammot, 38, 442-455

(in Hebrew).


20/24

Birch. H. and L. Belmont (1965) Auditory-visual integration in brain damagedand normal children, Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 7: 3-7

Bradley, L. and P.E. Bryant (1983) Categorizing sounds and learning to read -a causal explanation, Nature, 301, 419-421.

Bradshaw, J. L. (1975) Three interrelated problems in reading: a review,Memory and Cognition, 3, 123-134

Boder, E. (1973) Developmental dyslexia: a diagnostic approach based onthree typical reading spelling patterns, Developmental Medicine and ChildNeurology 15, 663 ff.

Chall, J.S. (1982) Stages of Reading Development, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Colarusso, R. P. and D. Hammill (eds.) 1972 . M.V.P.T. Motor Free VisualPerception Test, San Rafael, CA: Academic Therapy Publications.

Cornoldi C. and J. Oakhill (eds.) (1996) Reading Comprehension Difficulties -Processes and Intervention, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

DiFrancesca, S. (1972) Academic Achievement Test Results of a NationalTesting Program for Hearing Impaired Students, Washington D.C.: Gallaudet

College, Office of Demographic Studies.

Engel, R. (1987) Dysgraphics - Theoretical and Applied Aspects of Writing

Impairment, Tel-Aviv: Ramot Publishing House, the University of Tel-Aviv.

Engel, R. (1997) Instrument for locating students with learning disabilities,International Journal of Rehabilitation Research, Vol. 20 , 2 (June), 169-181.

Frith, U. (1985) "Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia", in:

Patterson K.E. Marshall, and M. Coltheart (eds.) Surface Dyslexia, Hillsdale,NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 301-330

Geschwind, N. (1985) Dyslexia in neurological perspective, in: Geschwind, N.(ed.) Dyslexia, A Neuroscientific Approach to Clinical Evaluation, U.S.A.: Little

Brown and Comp.

Glinert, L. (1989) The Grammar of Modern Hebrew, Cambridge, New York:Cambridge University Press.

Goswami, U. and P. Bryant (1990) Phonological Skills and Learning to Read,

Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Holmes, D.L. and R.J. Peper (1978) An evaluation of the use of spelling - areply to Forster and Grierson, British Journal of Psychology, 69, 499-503.


21/24


22/24

Rutter, M. and Yule, W. (1975) The concept of specific reading retardation,Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 16, 181-198

Rudel, R.G. and Denkla, M.B. (1976) Relationship of IQ and reading score tovisual, spatial, and temporal matching tasks, Journal of Learning Disabilities,

9, 169-178

Shanahan, T.and S.B. Neuman(1997) Literacy research that makes a

difference, Reading Research Quarterly, 32:2, 202-210.

Shallice , T., and Warrington, E. (1975) Word recognition in a phonemicdyslexic patient, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27, 187-199

Sharan, S. and Y. Sharan (1978) Learning Impairment and Its Correction,Merhavia: Po'alim Library (in Hebrew).

Sharony, V. (1990) "What is learning impairment", in: Problems in Special

Education, Tel-Aviv: The Open University (in Hebrew).

Soderberg, R. (1985) Early reading with deaf children, Prospects, 15, 1, 77-

85.

Truax, R.R. (1978) Reading and language, in: R.R. Kretschmer and L.W.

Kretschmer (eds.) Language Development and Intervention with the HearingImpaired, Baltimore: University Park Press, 279-310.

Vernon, M. D. (1979) Variability in reading retardation, British Journal ofPsychology, 70, 7-9.

Vernon, M. D. (1972) Mind over mouth: A rationale for total communication,Volta Review, 74, 529-54

Vernon, M. D. (1966) Perception in relation to cognition, in A.H. Kidd and J.L.Rivoire (eds.) Perceptual Development in Children, New York: International

Universities Press.

Warrington, E.K. and P. Rabin (1971) Visual span of apprehension in patients

with unilateral cerebral lesions Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,23, 423-431.

Warrington, E.K and T. Shallice (1979) Semantic access dyslexia, Brain, 102,43-63

Waters, G. S. and D.G. Doehring (1990) Reading acquisition in congenitallydeaf children who communicate orally: insights from an analysis ofcomponent reading, language, and memory skills, in T. H. Carr and B.A. Levy(eds.) Reading and its Development, San Diego: Academic press, 232-373


23/24

Whitney, P., D. Budd, R.S. Bramucci and R.S. Crane (1995) On babies, bathwater and schemata: A reconsideration of top-down processes in

comprehension, Discourse Processes, 20, 135-166.

Table 1. Breakdown of Hearing Impaired subjects per grade and region

Grade Haifa Region Tel-Aviv Region Total

2nd 7 1 8

3rd 7 13 20

4th 6 5 11

5th 5 5 10

6th 4 --- 4

Total 29 24 53

group 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade

HIaverage

STD

14

5.4

49.6

5.4

50.8

11.2

61.3

15.8

66.41

17.9

auditory

averageSTD

17.407

20.9510.8

43.213.4

59.915.7

61.315.6

visualaverage

STD

17.85

6.2

20.75

12.34

42.5

15.7

43.3

19.4

48.4

16.6

Figure Captions

Figure 1. Effect of reading meaningful or meaningless text in the three

groups by grades(High scores indicate that meaningful text helps reading. The asterisk markssignificance)

Figure 2. Sequential, holistic and combined reading in the three groups bygrades

a: Hearing Impaired (HI), b: Auditory Perception (AP), c: Visual Perception(VP)

Figure 3. Proportion of self-correction in reading in the three groups

Figure 4. Effect of reading "pointed" and "un-pointed" text in the threegroups by grades


24/24


Figure 5. Average number of words per minute (WPM) in the three groups bygrades

Figure 6. Technical reading errors by the "Hearing Impaired" in the threegroups by grades


Notes

a - In Classical Hebrew all the vowels were indicated by diacritical signs, inaddition to 4 letters used to indicate long vowels ("mater lectionis"). InModern Hebrew, new rules have been added by the Academy of the Hebrew

Language, so that the use of these "mater lectionis" letters has expanded to

more cases than in the past.

b - It was later found that hearing impaired and deaf children often acquiresign language even earlier than hearing children acquire oral langauge.

c - The ages of children of this group varied more than in the dyslexicgroups, because as is well known, hearing impaired children are generally

slower in developing their language and literacy skills than hearing children.We therefore ignore individual ages in this study and refer to grades only.

d - "Too many" compared to their occurrence probability according to the

equal distribution hypothesis.

e - Probably as a result of the mediation of the structure of Hebrew SignLanguage they do not cosnider it important to distinguish between, e.g.,

/lamad/ ??? (he studied) and /lamda/ ???? (she studied) where the last letteris not pronounced at all, or between /lamad/??? (he learnt) and /lilmod/

????? (to learn) where the first letter heads the infinitive form of the root.
http://www.bda-dyslexia.org.uk/http://www.inclusive.co.uk/

reading difficulty

Documents