Psychology Presentation : Critical Analyses Of the Article

DEVELOPMENTAL DYSLEXICS AND UNIMPAIRED CHILDREN’S READING AND MEMORY FOR WORDS

IN A TRANSPARENT ORTHOGRAPHY

By Natasza D. Nalesnik and Bahman Baluch,

Critical Analysis by …………

PSY4012 Research Methods

Summary - Abstract

■ This is an article published in 2010 in the Europe’s Journal of Psychology, which is a peer reviewed academic journal

■ The purpose of the study was to investigate word reading and short-term memory of developmental dyslexic (DD) children in comparison with unimpaired reading age (RA) group and chronological age (CA) control group, in transparent Polish orthography.

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■ The title is appropriate and includes the independent and dependent variables

■ The abstract briefly but clearly explains to the reader the aims of the study, participants, procedure and a summary of the findings

Literature Review

■ It is stated that there is little research on the development of reading and spelling in Polish and none reported on short-term memory for dyslexics in comparison with unimpaired readers.

■ Phonological processing and development of reading – research shows that dyslexic children are slower and make more errors compared with unimpaired readers in reading aloud (Jackson &Coltheart, 2001) and show greater difficulty in tasks involving phonological awareness (Goswami &Bryant, 1990)

■ Orthographic transparency and development of reading – it is claimed that a transparent script is based on a simple conversion of grapheme to phoneme without lexical involvement (e.g. polish script), therefore there may less reading difficulties in a transparent language (Snowling, 2004). However, Baluch and Danaye-Tousie’s study (2006) found that dyslexics present difficulties with phonological processing even for transparent words.

Literature Review - Cont…

■ Phonological processing and working memory – evidence shows that dyslexics present difficulties in activities that involve verbal as well as visual spatial processing (Smith-Spark & Fisk, 2007)

■ Orthographic transparency and working memory – studies found that dyslexic children perform better on memory tasks (recalling particularly transparent words) compared with RA control (Swanson, 1993); also DD performed similarly with CA group (Baluch & Danaye-Tousie, 2006)

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■ Extensive literature review provided, which helps the reader to better understand the background and the rationale of the study

■ Detailed explanation of the Polish orthography, useful if the study will be replicated with a different script

Research Questions 1. To compare reading performance of developmental dyslexics in

transparent Polish orthography with unimpaired RA and CA controls.

■ It is hypothesised that if developmental dyslexics in Polish show greater difficulty in reading compared to both RA and CA, this further supports a view in which there are significant deficits due to phonological processing as a result of being dyslexic and not due to orthographic transparency

2. To examine short-term recall of polish words by dyslexics, RA and CA

controls under 2 experimental conditions: A – readers are told that they are

expected to recall words; B – readers receive no instructions

■ It is hypothesised that dyslexics do not show any memory deficit in recalling high frequency words, and that dyslexics might be better at taking advantage of prior instructions to recall words.

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■ The aims of the study are well formulated and the expected outcomes are clearly explained

Design and Participants ■ Experimental design - included a total of 111 polish children - 3 groups, DD, RA, CA

(matched on parents education, economic status, with no difference in their IQ, no

emotional or neurological problems)

■ DD - 42 children (28 male, 14 female, mean age = 10.1 years) diagnosed as

developmental dyslexics by a special psychological clinic over a two day assessment

using reading, maths, motor skills and IQ test (Raven’s Coloured Matrices Test)

■ RA control group - 33 children (17 male, 16 female, mean age = 8.5 years)

■ CA control group – 36 children (20 male, 16 female, mean age = 10.6 years)

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■ The number of participants in DD group is slightly bigger and predominantly male

comparing with RA and CA groups which are more balanced in terms of gender, and

there is no mention if this can affect the results

■ RA participants recruited according to information provided by their teachers, but it is

not stated how their reading age was tested

■ No mention of how participants were tested for emotional and neurological problems

Materials and Procedure ■ Teachers were asked to come up with 32 one syllable words (high frequency words in Polish

textbooks), but only 24 were randomly selected for the study.

■ 12 words were used in the practice trial and 12 in the actual experiment, which are provided in the appendix - useful in case of replicating the study

■ The procedure is clearly explained and easy to follow. Ethical considerations were taken into account by obtaining approval from the Head teachers and parental consent

■ Participants were assigned to one of the 2 conditions: A: children were asked to read the words as quick as possible and they were informed that they will require to recall words in a following activity. B: there was no mention of recall task.

■ In both conditions, reading was followed by a distracter task (maths activity for 20 seconds) - beneficial as it reduces the recency effect.

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■ It was not stated when the experiment took place (e.g. during the morning sessions or afternoon sessions) as it might have an impact on children’s productivity. There is evidence that children perform better in the morning than in the afternoon. (Pope, 2016)

Results ■ Descriptive statistics are clearly displayed in tables - mean and SD

were calculated for dependent variables: - time taken to read,

- number of errors,

- correctly recalled words

■ Inferential statistics – 3 group (DD, RA, CA) by 2 conditions (A, B) factorial ANOVA conducted for: 1. the time to read and 2. the number of words recalled.

■ Post-hoc comparison of the means was carried out (using Fisher’s LSD), which is appropriate in order to reduce type 1 error

■ Independent t-test conducted for number of errors in reading for DD group and RA control, as the mean and SD for CA control group were 0.

■ Correlations between variables were conducted

Results – cont…

■ ‘Time to read’ - statistical analysis shows significant differences between DD and RA, DD and CA, and RA and CA

■ ‘Number of errors in reading words’ - t-test analysis shows that for condition A there was a significant difference between DD and RA; no significance for condition B

■ ‘Number of words recalled’ - analysis shows significant differences between DD and RA, CA and RA, but not between DD and CA.

■ Correlations between variables show that overall older readers are faster in reading and have better recall of the words

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■ The results are clearly explained and discussed, which assists the reader in understanding how the data was analysed

Discussion ■ The aims of the research are appropriately reminded to the reader and

findings are well discussed in relation to the aims of the study

■ It was found that dyslexics are significantly slower in time taken to read when compared with unimpaired groups even in a transparent script

■ In regards to working memory, it was found that dyslexics have a superior memory compared to RA and comparable to CA in both conditions of the experiment.

■ Findings are well linked with studies presented in literature review

■ Implications of the results are mentioned as it can have an impact on teaching and intervention strategies for dyslexics children

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■ No recommendations in regards to the type of interventions and teaching strategies

■ There are no suggestions for further research

References:

■ References are appropriate and relevant to the study - around 50 sources

■ Although majority of the sources are not within 5 years of the publication’s date, this might be due to little research existent on the topic

Overall, a very interesting read!

Thank you for watching!

Bibliography

■ Goodwin, C.J & Goodwin, K.A. (2014) Research in Psychology: Methods and Design. Singapore: Wiley

■ Nalesnik, N. D., & Baluch, B. (2010). Developmental dyslexics and unimpaired children's reading and memory for words in a transparent orthography. Europe's Journal of Psychology, 6(1), 44.

■ Pope, N. G. (2016). How the time of day affects productivity: Evidence from school schedules. Review of Economics and Statistics, 98(1), 1-11.