This diploma thesis called ?Phonological skills in prevention of readers difficulty? focuses on recognizing of the relationship between phonological skills and reading in czech (transparent) language environment. Theoretical part gives a definition of dyslexia and gives her typology. It delimits the causes, diagnostics, rectification and influence of dyslexia on a child. It advises how to work with pupils with dyslexia. Practical part contains own testing of pupils´ phonological skills. It describes procedure and the method of measurement, it gives description of exercises and gained experience.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a group of adolescents with the learning disorder of dyslexia and a group of adolescents without dyslexia in regard to their ability to make realistic drawings. Subjects selected for the study were from a suburban junior high school in which a random sample was taken of both dyslexic and non-dyslexic students. Each was given three standardized drawing tasks, including a still-life drawing, a contour drawing, and a perspective drawing. The drawings were judged by five evaluators on a continuum of realistic to non-realistic. The ratings were then analyzed by the application of the Mann-Whitney U-Test, which indicated that there are no significant differences in the abilities of the two groups to render drawings realistically.

The purpose of this pilot project was to determine the factors or supports that college graduates perceived as helping them to thrive and attempt higher education, despite having a learning disability, specifically dyslexia. Based on the literature review, this pilot study examined the four main kinds of support that most students receive while growing up; including family support, peer support, teacher support, and support from other programs and resources. The specific research question explored: What encouraged or discouraged these now adults in their pivotal growing years in regards to dyslexia? This pilot study used a mixed-methods research design which included an anonymous online survey and interview. With only one interview completed a single-case study was derived. The results of this pilot study are shared, including implications for educators and suggestions for future research. What was found is that all four highlighted sources of support played a role in the lives of the participants. The common thread that wove them altogether was socioemotional support provided by those sources.

This study aims to investigate how special needs teachers work with dyslexic pupils who are not reaching the goals of the subject of English. In addition, the focus is to examine dyslexic pupils’ experienced areas of difficulties and also how to structure the language teachings in order to facilitate for the pupils with dyslexia. The method of collecting data for this essay is based on a qualitative research approach through semi-structured interviews with special needs teachers. The results conclude that the informants do not support the pupils directly since their assignment is instead to coach the teachers, which mean that their main responsibility is to work primarily with school organization. Also, through this essay it became evident that dyslexia exists in every language and the specific learning disability is not equal with a failed grade in English.

Naming speed (NS) tasks that measure how quickly and accurately participants can name visual stimuli (e.g., letters) are commonly used to predict reading ability. However, the link between NS and reading is poorly understood. Three methods were used to investigate how NS relates to reading and what cognitive processes are involved: (a) changing stimulus composition to emphasize phonological and/or visual aspects (Compton, 2003); (b) decomposing NS times into pause and articulation components; and (c) analyzing eye movements during a NS task. Participants were in three groups: dyslexics (aged 9, 10), chronological-age (CA) controls (age 9, 10), and reading-level (RL) controls (aged 6, 7). We used a letter NS task and three variants that were either phonologically and/or visually confusing while subjects’ eye movements and articulations were recorded, and examined how these manipulations influenced NS performance and eye movements. For all groups, NS manipulations were associated with specific patterns of behaviour and saccadic performance, reflecting differential contributions of NS to reading. RL controls were less efficient, made more errors, saccades and regressions, and made longer fixation durations, articulation times, and pause times than CA controls. Dyslexics consistently scored in between controls, except for the number of saccades and regressions in which they made more than both control groups. Overall there were clear developmental changes in NS performance, NS components, and eye movements in controls from ages 6 to 10 that appear to occur more slowly for dyslexics. Furthermore, pause time and fixation duration were key features in the NS-reading relationship, and increasing visual similarity of the letter matrix had the greatest effect on performance for all subjects. This latter result was demonstrated by the decrease in efficiency and eye-voice span, increase in naming errors, saccades, and regressions, and longer pause times and fixation durations found for all subjects. We conclude that NS is related to reading via fixation durations and pause times; longer fixation durations reflect the greater amount of time needed to acquire visual/orthographic information from stimuli, and longer pause times in children with dyslexia reflect the greater amount of time needed to prepare to respond to stimuli. / Thesis (Master, Neuroscience Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-26 12:24:53.951

This thesis explores implicit learning in children with developmental dyslexia. While specific cognitive abilities such as phonology and memory have been extensively explored in developmental dyslexia more global, fundamental abilities are rarely studied. A literature review is reported, which indicates that there is a gap in the study of more generic abilities highlighting at the same time, the need of investigating developmental dyslexia in the kind of contemporary context that learning literature provides. Implicit learning seems a suitable paradigm case to explore global abilities in developmental dyslexia since there have been suggestions that learning becomes more implicit in nature after explicit instruction. Based on the proposed relationship between implicit learning and reading, it is argued that impairments in the mechanisms of implicit learning could mediate selective weaknesses in reading performance in developmental dyslexia. The present thesis tests this argument in a series of three studies that are composed of five linked experiments. Together the three studies reported in the present thesis provide evidence for the implicit learning abilities in children with and without developmental dyslexia. The results suggest that while implicit learning abilities are found intact in typically developing children, children with developmental dyslexia on the other hand, might be facing an implicit learning deficit that could affect their reading performance and inhibit them from reaching their full learning potential.

It is still unresolved whether individuals with dyslexia suffer non-verbal auditory processing deficits that may explain their phonological problems. Many studies have shown that dyslexic individuals are poor at discriminating pure tones, and this deficit has been attributed to impaired rapid auditory processing. In order to investigate the temporal properties of auditory processing in dyslexia, I have therefore studied the pure tone discrimination abilities of dyslexics, and then analysed the effects of varying interstimulus interval, the amount of frequency difference, and the effect of adding distractor tones during the interstimulus interval. In an investigation of dyslexic individuals’ ability to remember sequences of tones or digits (tonal and digit recognition memory), Rose and Rosner (2005) found that their results were affected by the education their subjects had received. The university educated dyslexics showed little tone discrimination deficit, whereas the dyslexic participants who never attended university showed greater deficits. Therefore, another aim of this thesis was to further study these findings and to identify any auditory processing compensatory mechanisms used by dyslexics who have received higher education. In eight different auditory tasks, the majority of which I programmed, I found strong evidence of non-verbal auditory processing deficits in dyslexic individuals. The comparison of university and non-university groups showed that educational differences had clear effects on many of their abilities, and should not be underestimated. The results showed that: • In general, dyslexics had poorer auditory frequency discrimination than controls. • Dyslexics who did not attend university had lower performance on almost all the auditory tests than the university dyslexic or control groups. • Unexpectedly, university educated dyslexics were less distracted by interrupting tones during frequency discrimination than university educated controls. • In a tone sequence memory task, the university educated dyslexics compensated in their performance to a level not much below that of the university educated controls, and above the controls who did not go to university. • The frequency recognition tasks positively correlated with literacy abilities, and were independent of general intelligence. The strongest correlations were in the non-university dyslexic group. The implications of these results are that not only do dyslexic individuals suffer from a low level, non-linguistic, auditory processing deficit, but those who do not get to university are less able to compensate for these difficulties. It is impossible to say if the higher performance in university educated dyslexics was due to compensation, or if their presence at university was due to a lack of these deficits in the first place. Nevertheless, since university educated dyslexics were better at resisting distractions this may underlie their ability to compensate. These findings could facilitate the creation of new teaching methods to support the development of dyslexics’ compensatory skills and new non-linguistic diagnostic aids. These would help with identifying dyslexia in second languages and enable earlier testing and identification, before reading failure exerts its inevitable negative effects on children’s self-confidence, happiness and future academic potential.

There is agreement among researchers that phonological awareness deficits are one of the main causes of dyslexia. Some researchers support the view that phonological awareness can be improved by teaching reading through a topdown approach (whole word) or a bottom-up approach (grapheme-phoneme); others claim that the combination of these two complementary approaches is more successful. The goal of this research combined reading intervention programme was to enhance the six 'dyslexic students' phonological awareness and to improve their reading in English in the inclusive English as a foreign language classroom. The research studied the effects the reading intervention programme, which systematically combines the two complementary approaches for the same duration of time in each session, had on the six Israeli research 'dyslexic students'. The present study is an inductive action research applying a case study design using qualitative research tools. Data from in-depth pre- and post-intervention interviews is triangulated with the participants' diaries, the practitioner's journal and the documentation of the pre- and post-intervention participants' assessments. Thematic data analysis indicated an improvement in the participants' phonological awareness, reading in English and functioning in the inclusive EFL classroom as a result of the combined reading intervention programme. The contribution to knowledge points to the fact that while a four-month cognitive intervention programme with 'dyslexic students' in Israel, studying English as a foreign language may improve students' cognitive functioning in English, it is insufficient in enabling students to allay their fears regarding the expectations of Israeli society, and their ability to succeed in life. Propositions suggest conducting a further action research study which examines the implementation of an additional emotional intervention to the cognitive one. The development of the emotional intervention will enable evaluation of the effects of a combined programme on 'dyslexic students' in Israel.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Many adults and children have problems reading and comprehending books, signs, written directions, etc. These same individuals have difficulty processing written materials as a result of right hemisphere interference. The Lynks Reader (DLR Co., Richmond, VA) is a commercially developed device which has been used to help individuals move from their right to their left hemisphere and to increase reading fluency and comprehension. The objective of this project was to evaluate the best way to use the various forms of the Lynks Reader. Using the device demonstrated an increase in reading fluency and comprehension by increasing the left hemisphere dominance. In addition, different types of headphones with microphones, and music devices (MP3 or CD player), were studied to determine which performs best in formulating a more effective device. Furthermore, the voice and music sound level and frequency output of the device was calibrated to insure the efficacy.