DYSLEXIA IN ADULTS - EVIDENCE FOR DEFICITS IN NON-WORD READING AND INTHE PHONOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION OF LEXICAL ITEMS

Difficulties in reading and language skills which persist from childho od into adult life are the concerns of this article. The aims were two fold: (1) to find measures of adult reading processes that validate ad ults' retrospective reports of difficulties in learning to read during the school years, and (2) to search for indications of basic deficits in phonological processing that may point toward underlying causes of reading difficulties. Adults who reported a history of difficulties i n learning to read (n = 102) were distinctly disabled in phonological coding in reading, compared to adults without similar histories (n = 5 6). They were less disabled in the comprehension of written passages, and the comprehension disability was explained by the phonological dif ficulties. A number of indications were found that adults with poor ph onological coding skills in reading (i.e., dyslexia) have basic defici ts in phonological representations of spoken words, even when semantic word knowledge, phonemic awareness, educational level, and daily read ing habits are taken into account. It is suggested that dyslexics poss ess less distinct phonological representations of spoken words.