ORTHOGRAPHIC PROCESSING ABILITIES OF ADOLESCENTS WITH DYSLEXIA

This study investigated the orthographic processing abilities of readi ng disabled adolescents (XD), normal readers matched on chronological age (CA), and younger normal readers matched on reading age (RA). The mean age for the three groups were 14 years 2 months, 13 years 8 month s, and 10 years respectively. Four experimental measures were adapted from prior research. These include homophone choice accuracy (after St anovich, West, and Cunningham 1991), orthographic choice accuracy and speed (after Olson et al. 1989), and rapid serial naming of letters (a fter Denckla and Rudel 1976). In addition, a new, test of orthographic processing is introduced (from Hultquist 1996) which assesses the spe ed and accuracy of reading high frequency words when presented within strings of consonants (embedded) and when presented alone (nonembedded ). The RD group displayed greater difficulty than the CA-matched norma l readers on five of the six measures, and performed worse than the RA -matched younger readers on four of the six tasks. Error analyses reve aled that the RD group had specific difficulty processing consonant bl ends wizen reading embedded words.