COMPARISON OF DEFICITS IN COGNITIVE AND MOTOR-SKILLS AMONG CHILDREN WITH DYSLEXIA

There is a growing body of evidence that children with dyslexia have p roblems not just in reading but in a range of skills including several unrelated to reading. In an attempt to compare the severity and incid ence of deficits across these varied domains, children with dyslexia ( mean ages 8, 12, and 16 years), and control groups of normally achievi ng children matched for IQ and for age or reading age, were tested on a range of primitive (basic) skills. The children with dyslexia perfor med significantly worse than the same-age controls on most tasks, and significantly worse even than the reading-age controls on phoneme segm entation, picture naming speed, word tachistoscopic word recognition, speeded bead threading and some balance tasks. The overall performance of the children with dyslexia is interpreted as showing less complete automatization than normal.