Word Identification and Reading Disorders in the Spanish Language

• Published in: Journal of learning disabilities Vol. 33; no. 1; pp. 44 - 60
• Main Authors: Gonzalez, Juan E. Jimenez, Valle, Isabel Hernandez
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Thousand Oaks, CA SAGE Publications 01.01.2000; Sage; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; Child; Child clinical studies; Child Development; Children; Children with disabilities; Decision making; Development; Developmental Delays; Developmental disorders; Disability; Dyslexia; Early Reading; Educational psychology; Elementary Education; English; English language; Evidence; Factors; Female; Graphemes; Humans; Identification; Language; Language Processing; Learning Disabilities; Learning disorders; Male; Matched Groups; Medical sciences; Naming; Orthographic processing; Orthography; Phoneme Grapheme Correspondence; Phonemes; Phonemics; Phonological processing; Phonology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reading; Reading Ability; Reading Difficulties; Reading disabilities; Reading Skills; Recognition (Psychology); Semantics; Serbocroatian; Spanish; Spanish language; Spanish Speaking; Special education; Syllables; Theories; Word frequency; Word length; Word Recognition; Written Language; Human; Word; Reading disorder; Cognition; Verbal perception; English; School age; Language; Learning disability; Vision; Information processing; Phonology; Child; Recognition
• ISSN: 0022-2194; 1538-4780
• DOI: 10.1177/002221940003300108

In this study, a reading-level-match design was used to test the hypothesis that children with reading disability (RD) are characterized by poor phonological skills, and that a developmental lag, as opposed to a specific deficit, will be found in transparent orthographies. Spanish has a transparent orthography and thus children with RD should not show severe difficulties in the use of the phonological route, as in the English language. A sample of 118 participants was selected and organized into three different groups: 40 with RD, 38 normal readers matched in age with the former, and 40 younger normal readers at the same reading level as those with RD. Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of lexicality, word frequency, word length, and positional frequency of syllables on lexical decision making and word-naming performance. While the participants were performing the naming task, we recorded what they read to subsequently analyze the form as well as the frequency of naming errors. The present study provides evidence for a deficit in phonological processing in a transparent orthography, particularly in nonword reading, because there were differences between the reading-level-matched groups.