UNITE SpLD 2018

by Chinta Suvarna Rekha and Bipin Indurkhya

Reading is one of the cognitive tasks that require a high alert state; a large number of studies around the world demonstrated that frontoparietal regions of the brain are involved in the reading process. Parietal regions are also responsible for alert state, disruption of parietal regions leads to disruption of attention mechanism. Considerable evidence has shown that dyslexics have a disruptive attentional mechanism, which in turn affects the reading process. In our previous studies, we observed attention deficits among children with dyslexia (CWD).

In this study, we explored the attention and phonological abilities of bilingual children with dyslexia. These abilities were studied with Attention Network Test (ANT) and phoneme awareness test (PA) respectively.

by Kong Wai Kuen

Language development delay is prevalent among young children nowadays. This may be due to lack of practice and familiarization in writing and reading. Speaking and listening are still noticeably developed and trained in most young children. Most children find using keypads and gadgets more interesting and engaging than holding a pencil and reading a book. Therefore, investigating the reasons why young children have difficulty with language development is important to ensure they are properly diagnosed.

by Omar Hassan and Abdessattar Mahfoudhi,
Center for Child Evaluation and Teaching, Kuwait

“I Read and Write!” is an individualized, structured language training program and materials for teaching persons who have moderate to severe difficulties with learning to read and spell in Arabic. The program is designed for use in a one-to-one or small group (two-three students) tutorial setting and will focus on Modern Standard Arabic generic to the Gulf Region. Areas of literacy targeted are early reading skills (phonological awareness and letter awareness), decoding/encoding, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, as well as written expression skills. While the material will be geared for Chall›s reading stages 1-3 (approximate reading and spelling grade levels K/1 through grade 7/8). The program’s broad skills goals will be indexed to key curricular benchmarks for Gulf region language curricula for grades 1 9; the purpose of doing this is to demonstrate the curricular relevance of the materials to teachers and school administrators throughout the Gulf, but the skills are relevant for all other Arab countries and learners of Arabic.

by Kristiantini Dewi
Chairwoman of Dyslexia Association of Indonesia

by Dian Larassati, Yoan Utami Putri, Dhita Natasha Dwiriyanti, Dian Dwy Sary

from Growth and Development Division, Department of Pediatrics, Zainab Hospital, Pekanbaru, Indonesia

by Maria De Palma*, Dr. Uma Kulkarni**, and Dr. Maureen W. Lovett*
The Hospital For Sick Children, Toronto Canada*; Dr. Anjali Morris Education and Resource Centre**

We describe a pilot partnership between a research group at the Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, Canada) and the Dr. Anjali Morris Foundation (AMF) (Pune, India), a leader in services for Indian students at risk for LD and in teacher professional development (PD). The initiative reported here explores the scale-up of the Empower™ Reading Program, an evidence-based literacy program for children and adolescents with reading disabilities, developed in Toronto. The Decoding and Spelling (DS) Program was used with children and adolescents in Pune, India who struggle with reading and attend English medium schools. We detail the Empower™ Reading PD for 10 AMF teachers and implementation of the program with 40 students at AMF.

by Soleha Razali

Dyslexia and Working Memory
People with dyslexia are known to have working memory impairments as well (Jefferies & Everatt, 2004; Swanson, et al., 2009; Banai & Ahissar, 2004). Pickering and Gathercole (2001) as cited in Malekpour et al. (2013) reported that on average, children with dyslexia show poor performance on working memory task, reverse digit span. It is also found that children with dyslexia have poor verbal working memory (Pickering & Gathercole, 2004; Banai & Ahissar, 2004) and visuo-spatial working memory (Kibby, et al., 2004). Snowling (2000), as cited in Menghini, et al. (2011), found reduced verbal span in children with dyslexia as compared to age matched typical readers.

by Takashi Goto ^1,2, Akira Uno ^2,4 , Naoki Tani ³ , Toshiaki Uchiyama ⁵ , Toshimasa Yamanaka ^5
1 Faculty of Health Sciences, Mejiro University, Japan, ² LD/Dyslexia Centre, Japan,
³ Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan, ⁴ Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan
⁵ Faculty of Art and Design, University of Tsukuba, Japan

We administered rapid reading tasks in Japanese children (32 with typical development and 24 with developmental dyslexia), and investigated the effects of two different font types: Rounded-Gothic and Mincho style font. In the experiment, we used four kinds of stimuli: two scripts (paragraphs and random kana character non-words) in two font types (Rounded-Gothic and Mincho style font). In this experiment, the duration time, the number of errors and the number of self-corrections were measured during reading.
Participants were asked which font type was more comfortable to read. There was no significant difference in the duration time, the number of errors and the number of self-corrections between two types of fonts among the 56 participants.
On the other hand, regarding subjective readability, the developmental dyslexia group reported that the Rounded Gothic font was easier to read. There was a difference between objective and subjective readability. In this study, there was no difference in reading performance of Rounded-Gothic and Mincho style fonts in Japanese children with developmental dyslexia.

by Angelica Benson, Ed.M. – Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes®
San Luis Obispo, California USA

Is the Dual-Coding Theory (DCT) of cognition a critical factor in word reading and spelling, as applied to addressing the symptoms of dyslexia including weak phonemic awareness and orthographic processes? Can the reading deficits associated with dyslexia be addressed with an intervention approach grounded in DCT?

This poster explores the nature and role of symbol imagery (mental imagery representing the letters and sounds in words) in enhancing reading for dyslexics. These diagnostic and behavioral intervention findings validate the imagery-language connection, as proposed by DCT, resulting in significant effects on word attack, word recognition, fluency, and comprehension – those specific areas of concern for students with dyslexia.