published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of South Africa, 2002.

The significance of reading is undoubted today, while learning to read efficiently is a main aim of every educational system. Reading is one of the greatest challenges that pupils, students and adults have to encounter daily at school, university and professional life, especially dyslexics, for whom it is a really hard and demanding process. Given the importance of reading and the various factors can positively or negatively influence the reading ability, the current study aims to investigate to what extent the reading process is affected a) by familiarity with text, and b) by biological-constitutional factors. In this respect, the reading performance a) of Greek language teachers was compared to that of 12th grade pupils, and b) of adult dyslexic students to that of age-matched normal controls in terms of reading speed, accuracy and comprehension. The reading performance of teachers and pupils was evaluated in an Ancient Greek text and its corresponding translation in Modern Greek. The reading performance of adult dyslexics and controls was evaluated in 2 texts of varying difficulty and a list of words of raising difficulty. Participants read both aloud and silently, while being timed and tape- recorded for further analysis. After reading each text, they answered to reading comprehension questions. Pupils made significantly more reading errors compared to teachers in both Ancient (p < .001) and Modern Greek (p <.05). However, they were significantly faster than teachers in all reading procedures (p < .001), while they did not lack in comprehension (p > .05). Both groups made similar reading errors in both Ancient and Modern Greek. Finally, comparing the two languages, both teachers and pupils were significantly faster (p < .001), comprehended better (p < .001) and were more accurate (p < .05) in Modern Greek. Adult dyslexic students were significantly slower (p < .001), attained lower level of comprehension (p < .05) and made significantly more reading errors (p < .001) than the control group in all reading procedures. In contrast to non-dyslexics who read significantly faster silently (p < .05), dyslexics read at almost the same rate in both aloud and silent condition (p > .05). Additionally, the former attained higher level of comprehension in the silent condition, as opposed to the latter, who showed a trend to comprehend better aloud. Comparing reading in context and out of context, dyslexics made significantly more reading errors in the word list (p < .001), whereas non-dyslexics made comparable reading errors in the word list and the two passages (p > .05). Both groups made similar reading errors. Finally, logistic regression analysis revealed that the 2 groups could be almost perfectly differentiated based on only one variable, namely reading speed (classification accuracy 98.1%). Findings confirmed that the reading process in the phonologically consistent Greek language is influenced by factors, such as language structure and familiarity with print as well as by biological-constitutional factors. Results emphasise on the importance of daily extensive reading practice for a better reading speed, at least, which is essential not only for normal-achieving population but dyslexic readers as well, since reading speed was found to be the latter’s main deficit and the main differentiating factor between dyslexics and controls. The results may be useful for effectively addressing the difficulties encountered not only by pupils who are taught but also by teachers who teach Ancient and Modern Greek, as they may lead to new teaching methods and learning strategies. Also, results might be helpful for the accurate diagnosis of adult dyslexics based on reading speed, as well as for the effective treatment of the difficulties dyslexic university students still encounter, due to their constitutional reading deficit.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Oral narrative ability has received increasing attention over the past three decades, and the importance of children's oral narrative skills to academic achievement has been well established. Children with reading disabilities are known to demonstrate difficulties in the ability to produce and comprehend oral narratives (Roth & Spekman, 1986; Snyder & Downey, 1991). However, the nature of the relationship between oral narrative ability and reading comprehension performance in children with reading disability is not clear. The experiments reported in this thesis aim to address this issue. The following questions are asked: 1) Do deficits in oral narrative ability contribute to reading comprehension difficulties? and 2) What is the likely direction of the relationship between aspects of oral narrative ability and reading comprehension performance in children with reading disabilities? Fourteen children (aged between 6;4 and 7;8 at the initial assessment) with mixed reading disability (MRD: i.e., children who demonstrate both word recognition and listening comprehension deficits) participated in the study. Their oral narrative skills were compared to those of their chronological age-matched peers with typical development (TD) and their reading-age-matched peers with typical development (RMTD). The study consisted of three phases: 1) A longitudinal phase in which the children's oral narrative performance was assessed on three occasions over a two-year period; 2) An intervention phase (using a nonequivalent pretest-posttest control group design) in which 10 children participated in an oral narrative intervention program that focused on enhancing children's story structure knowledge; and 3) A follow-up assessment phase conducted eight months post-intervention. Oral narratives were elicited in a personal narrative context and in a story retelling context. Oral narrative production ability was analysed at macrostructure (story quality) and microstructure (morpho-syntax and vocabulary) levels. Oral narrative comprehension was assessed in a fictional story context through questions relating to story structure elements. Reading comprehension performance was assessed using a standardised test of reading ability. The results from the longitudinal study showed that the children with MRD demonstrated inferior oral narrative production and oral narrative comprehension performance compared to their peers with typical reading development at each assessment occasion. When comparing the poor readers' performance to the RMTD group at the third assessment trial, the results suggested that the children with MRD demonstrated a specific deficit in oral narrative comprehension. In contrast, a pattern of delay was observed on the microstructure measures of oral narrative performance. The results from the intervention indicated significant treatment effects with large effect sizes for oral narrative comprehension performance. Despite this improvement in oral narrative comprehension, there was little change in oral narrative production ability, and transfer to reading comprehension was not evident. Although the follow-up assessment indicated sustained improvement in oral narrative comprehension for the children with MRD, accelerated reading comprehension progress was not evident. The findings from the longitudinal case study highlighted the benefits of oral narrative intervention for a child considered at high risk of continuing academic difficulties. This thesis provides evidence of the persistent oral narrative difficulties in children with MRD. The findings also provide support for the importance of narrative structure knowledge to these poor readers' oral narrative comprehension performance. The results demonstrate that oral narrative comprehension ability explains only a small amount of the variance in reading comprehension performance. Rather, the persistent word recognition difficulties of the children with MRD exert the biggest influence on their reading comprehension performance. These results are discussed in terms of current models of reading and language development. Implications for clinical practice are also addressed.

This was a study designed to investigate the effects of three independent variables in first-grade reading instruction on reading achievement and perceptual development. The independent variables included initial readiness level, type of instructional method, and sex of pupil. The major purpose of this study was to use an experimental setting to determine the relative effects of a multi-sensory perceptual training program combined with a basal-instruction program, as contrasted to an entirely conventional basal-reading program, on first-grade reading achievement and perceptual development during a school year.

The problem explored by this study is the nature of b-d confusion as it is exhibited by remedial and nonremedial readers at various elementary ages in the areas of letter identification, spelling, and reading. The purposes of Phase I of the study were to examine the progressive phase-out of b-d errors committed by samples of remedial and nonremedial readers and to explore certain factors that could be related to the problem. The object of Phase II was to describe subjects with extreme b-d reversal problems. Extreme b-d reversers were found to have been average or below on first-grade-readiness scores and significantly below grade-level placement in reading achievement. School marks were also generally low. As a whole, the extremes were predominantly right-handed and no sex bias was detected. When the extremes were compared to subjects above average in b-d responses, the extremes made significantly more errors on other letters, were able to read significantly fewer words, and required significantly more assistance in spelling. These groups significantly differed on position of b-d reversals in reading, but not in spelling, nor on the proportion of real words actually produced when reversals were made in reading. Reversal of b and d was not associated in the same population as b-p reversals.

Aim: This study aims to investigate the genetic components of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Reading Disability (RD), and their comorbidity. Methods: Three approaches were applied to data from 2610 Australian twin families. This data was obtained by parental completion of the ‘Twin and Sibling Questionnaire'. 1) Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was applied to generate genetically independent classes that defined ADHD subtypes and RD based on related cluster symptoms. 2) Genetic modelling was used to study the particular genetic and environmental effects of each ADHD subtype and of RD, and to examine whether children identified with comorbid ADHD-RD are a genetically distinct group from those who have only ADHD without RD. 3) A family-based genetic association, including haplotype block analysis, was applied to compare the efficacy of DSM-IV diagnostic criteria and LCA in the genotyping analysis, to test the genetic overlap of ADHD candidate genes on RD phenotypes.and vice versa, and to detect some of the risk alleles of ADHD alone, RD alone, and comorbid ADHD-RD. This analysis was performed on a data set that included 190 individuals from the original sample; it tested twenty-one Single Nucleotide Polyrnorphisms (SNPs) from five ADHD candidate genes (DRD4, DATI, SNAP25, COMT, and HTR1B), and four RD candidate genes (MRS2L, KIAA0319, TTRAP, and THEM2) from the 6p22.2 region. / Results: The LCA dissected the phenotypes for ADHD and RD into nine genetically informative classes. Univariate and bivariate results indicated the presence of unique genetic components on each ADHD subtype and RD category, and also showed the existence of genetic factors for comorbid ADHD-RD. The association findings, using continuous data represented by scores,of DSM-IV-defined ADHD and RD, showed two significant associations for ADHD and RD, whereas the association findings for the categorical data, represented by LCA, were richer as they showed 15 significant single-locus with ADHD and RD latent classes. Some of these association results were between ADHD candidate SNPs with RD latent classes and ADHD-RD comorbid classes. Some RD candidate SNPs were associated with ADHD latent classes and ADHD-RD comorbid classes. Haplotype block analysis detected a presence of one significant haplotype block containing two haplotype-tagging SNPs (ht-SNPs) of the COMT gene (rs4680 and rs165599), including three risk alleles ('AA', 'GC', and 'AC') that were associated with some phenotypic RD components. Conclusion: This study found that the use of ADHD-RD latent classes is more suitable for performing genetic association studies and haplotype block analysis than is DSM-IV- defined ADHD and RD definitions. Furthermore, there is an overlapping of genetic effect, as ADHD candidate genes contributed to RD phenotypes and vice versa. Thirdly, ADHD-RD comorbidity is caused by both ADHD and RD candidate genes.