Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 75-84). Also available in print.

We describe here, briefly, a perceptual non-reading measure which reliably distinguishes between dyslexic persons and ordinary readers. More importantly, we describe a regimen of practice with which dyslexics learn a new perceptual strategy for reading. Two controlled experiment on dyslexics children demonstrate the regimen's efficiency.

To help circumvent reading disability (RD) decoding difficulty, Text-To-Speech (TTS) software can be used to present written language audibly. Although TTS software is currently being used to help RD students, there is a lack of empirically supported literature to inform developers and users of TTS software on best practices. This dissertation investigated two methods to determine whether they increase the effectiveness of TTS for RD and typically-developing students. The first method compared low and high quality TTS voices in regards to understanding. TTS voice quality was identified by having 40 university students listen to and rate the quality of 10 commonly used TTS voices and 2 human voices. Three voices were chosen for the subsequent study based on the ratings; one low quality TTS, one high quality TTS, and one natural voice (Microsoft Mary, AT&T Crystal, and Susan, respectively). Understanding was assessed with tests of intelligibility and comprehensibility. Forty-five grade 6 to 8 students who were identified as having a RD were compared to same-age typically-developing peers. Results showed high quality TTS and natural voice were more intelligible than the low quality TTS voice, and high quality TTS voice resulted in higher comprehensibility scores than low quality TTS and natural voice. The second method investigated whether it is possible to increase a student’s comprehension when using TTS by modifying the presentation style of the TTS voice. The presentation style was manipulated in two ways: varying the speed at which the TTS presented the materials (120, 150, 180 words per minute) and the presence of pauses varied (no pauses inserted, random pauses inserted, or 500 millisecond pauses at the end of noun phrases). Due to a floor effect on the comprehension of the texts the expected results were not obtained. A follow up analysis compared the participants’ prosodic sensitivity skills based on whether they had a specific language impairment, (SLI) a reading impairment (RI), or were typically-developing. Results suggested that SLI has significantly less auditory working memory then RI impacting their auditory processing. Recommendations for future research and the use of TTS based on different learning profiles are provided.

To help circumvent reading disability (RD) decoding difficulty, Text-To-Speech (TTS) software can be used to present written language audibly. Although TTS software is currently being used to help RD students, there is a lack of empirically supported literature to inform developers and users of TTS software on best practices. This dissertation investigated two methods to determine whether they increase the effectiveness of TTS for RD and typically-developing students. The first method compared low and high quality TTS voices in regards to understanding. TTS voice quality was identified by having 40 university students listen to and rate the quality of 10 commonly used TTS voices and 2 human voices. Three voices were chosen for the subsequent study based on the ratings; one low quality TTS, one high quality TTS, and one natural voice (Microsoft Mary, AT&T Crystal, and Susan, respectively). Understanding was assessed with tests of intelligibility and comprehensibility. Forty-five grade 6 to 8 students who were identified as having a RD were compared to same-age typically-developing peers. Results showed high quality TTS and natural voice were more intelligible than the low quality TTS voice, and high quality TTS voice resulted in higher comprehensibility scores than low quality TTS and natural voice. The second method investigated whether it is possible to increase a student’s comprehension when using TTS by modifying the presentation style of the TTS voice. The presentation style was manipulated in two ways: varying the speed at which the TTS presented the materials (120, 150, 180 words per minute) and the presence of pauses varied (no pauses inserted, random pauses inserted, or 500 millisecond pauses at the end of noun phrases). Due to a floor effect on the comprehension of the texts the expected results were not obtained. A follow up analysis compared the participants’ prosodic sensitivity skills based on whether they had a specific language impairment, (SLI) a reading impairment (RI), or were typically-developing. Results suggested that SLI has significantly less auditory working memory then RI impacting their auditory processing. Recommendations for future research and the use of TTS based on different learning profiles are provided.

Multiple domains of deficit have been proposed to account for the apparent reading failure of children with a reading disability. Deficits in both phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming are consistently linked with the development of a reading disability in young school age children. Less research, however, has sought to connect these two reading related processes to global theories of deficit, such as temporal processing deficits, in the explanation of reading fluency difficulties. This study sought to explore the relationship between aspects of temporal processing, as indexed through measures of motor fluency and control, and measures of reading related processes, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming, to word reading fluency. Using structural equation modeling, measures of patterned motor movement were found to be negatively and significantly related to measures of phonological awareness. Measures of oral and repetitive movement were found to be positively and significantly related to measures of patterned movement. Finally, phonological awareness was found to be a significant predictor of word reading fluency both independently and through rapid automatized naming. No direct relationship between measures of motor control and fluency and word reading fluency was found. These findings suggest that temporal processing, as indexed by measures of motor fluency and control, are moderately predictive of the facility with which a child with a reading disability can access, manipulate, and reproduce phonetically based information. Implications for the inclusion of motor based measures in the assessment of children with reading disabilities and future directions for research are discussed.

published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Not available / text

The information processing approach was used as a basis for studying some brief visual memory processes in reading disabled children. Three aspects of processing were examined, viz. (i) Duration of icon persistence; (ii) Performance under different backward masking conditions; and (iii) Processing of information into a more durable short-term visual memory store. It was found that there were no differences in the duration of icon persistence in reading disabled children, but that these children exhibited marked impairment in performance in the tasks used in the latter two experiments. The reasons for the reading disabled children's poorer performance in these tasks were not apparent. Speculations about the strategies used by these children in approaching the tasks are made. Possible implications and directions for future research are discussed. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1980.

Based on phenomenology, traditional methods of diagnoses of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder-combined type (ADHD/C) and reading disorder (RD) are neither precise, nor do they provide explicit information relevant to intervention. Consequently, current researchers have called for diagnostic techniques based on etiological rather than traditional symptom-based markers. The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not WJ III cognitive profiles of individual students provided meaningful diagnostic evidence of ADHD/C and/or RD congruent with prominent theories and group scores from quantitative studies. Six holistic student cases were examined. Two were prequalified with ADHD/C, two with RD, and two with ADHD/C+RD using traditional symptom-based diagnosis. Data were drawn from archived psychoeducational evaluation case files including background information, psychosocial evaluations, and WJ III cognitive profiles. Contextual mediators such as testing room conditions, behavioral observations, and developmental histories were examined that might influence the interpretation of cognitive profiles within the school setting.Among the four students prequalified with RD, three students displayed the requisite cognitive profile of weaknesses on clusters of Phonemic Awareness-3 and/or Cognitive Fluency. A review of distinctive contexts in the fourth student's case as well as the absence of the expected RD cognitive profile supported the determination that his reading problems were secondary to ADHD/C. These findings produced theoretical as well as literal replications of the double-deficit theory of RD. Results were less clear among the four students prequalified with ADHD/C due to varying performances on tests of Broad Attention and Executive Processes--cognitive factors documented by the behavioral inhibition theory of ADHD/C. As expected, students prequalified with ADHD/C+RD displayed a wider range of deficits, presumably due to the additive effect of having two disorders. The mediating influence of idiosyncratic contexts underscored the importance of professional judgment in cognitive profile interpretation.Although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between academic performance deficits associated with ADHD/C and skills deficits associated with RD, it was shown that cognitive profiles in concert with a comprehensive psychoeducational evaluation can, in some cases, provide etiological evidence for differential diagnosis and a guide for intervention. More practice-based research within ecologically valid environments is recommended. / Department of Educational Psychology

This thesis investigates the reading and writing of two patients with brain injuries due to cerebro-vascular accidents. Background tests show both patients to be moderately anomic and to have severe impairments in reading and writing nonwords. Investigations of the locus of impairment in AN's nonword reading showed her to have normal orthographic analysis capabilities but impairments in converting single and multiple graphemes into phonemes and in phonemic blending. The central issue studied was the role of lexical but non-semantic processes in reading aloud, writing to dictation and copying. For this purpose a "familiar nonword" paradigm was developed in which the patients learned to read or write a small set of nonwords either with or without any associated semantics. Both AN and AM were able to learn to read nonwords to which no meanings were attached but they could still not read novel nonwords. Both patients were unable to report any meanings for the familiar nonwords when they read them and there was no evidence that learning to read them improved their sub-lexical processing abilities. These results are evidence for a direct lexical route from print to sound that is dedicated to processing whole familiar words. It was also shown with AN that if nonwords are given meanings then learning is faster than if they are not given meanings. Experiments designed to test the hypothesis that nonwords are read by analogy to words found no support for it. Both patients have severe impairments in writing novel nonwords to dictation. As they can repeat spoken nonwords after they have failed to write them, this is not due to a short-term memory impairment. Despite their nonword writing impairments, both patients were able to write to dictation the meaningless nonwords that they had previously learned to read at the first attempt, and AN did so one month after learning to read them. Neither patient however, could write novel nonwords made by reordering the letters of the familiar nonwords. Furthermore, the familiar nonwords used spellings that are of a priori low probability. The familiar nonwords must therefore have been written using lexical knowledge. Tests of semantic association showed that the familiar nonwords evoked no semantic information that the patients could report. Function words dictated to AN evoked little semantic information but she wrote them to dictation significantly better than nonwords made by reordering their letters. These results are evidence for a direct lexical route for writing to dictation. Copying was studied both with and without a five second delay between presentation and response. AN was better at delayed copying of meaningless but familiar nonwords than she was at copying novel nonwords. She was also better at delayed copying of six-letter, bi-syllabic nonwords that she had been trained to copy than she was at copying novel nonwords made by recombining the first and second halves of the familiar nonwords such that these halves retained their positions from the parent nonwords. AN was better at copying function words than nonwords made by reordering their letters. She was also better at copying function words than she was at reading or writing them to dictation. These results are evidence for a direct lexical route for copying. AN and AM were both able to write to dictation nonwords that they had never heard or written before but with which they had been made visually familiar during a visual discrimination task. They must have used lexical knowledge to do so because the spellings used were of a priori very low probability. The creation of lexical orthographic information which can be retrieved from novel auditory input raises difficulties for current models and various possible interpretations are discussed. Finally, some of the possible implications of the re-learning abilities shown by these patients, for rehabilitation procedures are discussed briefly.