The Psychology of Reading and Spelling Disabilities

A.F. Jorm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351614320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1983, recent advances in cognitive psychology had revealed that reading and spelling disabilities may be due to deficits in basic cognitive processes. Dr Jorm looks at each type of disability in detail, in relation to normality as well as intellectual disability (formerly called retardation), and finds that the new research provides a useful approach to seemingly intractable problems. He covers a broad range of topics, including the social context of reading disabilities, the role of biological factors, remedial teaching, and prevention of literacy problems. He also gives a forward-looking account of how research at the time on the cognitive processes in comprehension might aid our understanding of the relatively neglected group of children who can read individual words yet fail to comprehend adequately.

Reading disabilities are increasingly serious in a culture which places an ever higher value on literacy, and the discoveries of the cognitive psychologists are presented here in a way that will still be accessible to all those teachers and parents who want to know about developments in the past.

1 Varieties of reading and spelling disability

The problem of reading and spelling disabilities

Failure to achieve an adequate standard of literacy is generally recognised as being a major social problem in western societies. In a technologically advanced society, in which written language is all pervasive, a certain degree of reading and writing skills is absolutely necessary for survival. A person who is lacking in literacy skills is severely hampered in the range of educational and occupational choices he or she can make in life. Even today’s leisure activities often demand a reasonable level of reading and writing skills.

Problems with literacy have secondary consequences as well. With such a high value placed on literacy skills in our society, the child who fails to achieve as expected may become frustrated with formal education, may develop feelings of personal inadequacy, and may even react by engaging in anti-social behaviour at school. There are also secondary effects on the parents and teachers. They will inevitably feel disappointed that the child has failed to achieve; they may also feel helpless and inadequate because they cannot find a solution; and they may even feel guilty because they believe themselves to be at fault for the child’s difficulties. In the long run, these secondary effects may become almost as great a problem as the initial literacy difficulties which produced them.

Despite the importance of literacy difficulties, we still have very little understanding of the causes and cures of such problems. Anyone who looks for professional guidance on what to do about severe and persistent literacy problems is likely to be given conflicting diagnoses, labels and prescriptions. However, this unfortunate situation may be rapidly changing. Perhaps the major reason for the slow progress to date is that there was very little fundamental understanding of the processes involved in normal reading and spelling. It almost goes without saying that we will never understand reading and spelling disabilities until we have worked out some of the details of what is going on in normal reading and spelling. However, up until a decade ago researchers studying literacy problems were trying to do exactly that. Apart from some pioneering efforts early in the century, research into the normal reading process really only got underway in the 1970s, and research into the normal spelling process has been even later in coming. However, the research which has been carried out on normal reading and spelling so far is already making significant contributions to our understanding of disabilities.

Not only has our understanding of reading and spelling processes increased, but our understanding of cognitive processes in general has increased as well. As we will see, disabilities can result from deficits in the basic cognitive processes which underlie the complex skills of reading and spelling. Therefore, a fundamental knowledge of these basic cognitive processes is a prerequisite for an understanding of reading and spelling disabilities. Again, some real advances may be occurring on this front.

Perhaps the major difference between this book and previous treatments of the same topic is that it seeks an understanding of reading and spelling disabilities in terms of these recent advances in cognitive psychology.

Some basic distinctions

Before launching into a more detailed exposition of reading and spelling disabilities we need to make some basic distinctions and agree upon some terminology. It hardly needs to be pointed out that reading and spelling are very complex processes and that disabilities in these processes can arise in a number of different ways. One initial distinction which can be made is between loss of literacy skills after they have been acquired through some sort of damage to the brain, and failure to acquire adequate literacy skills during the course of otherwise normal development. The loss of literacy skills through brain damage is generally known as acquired dyslexia and is generally seen in adults rather than children. In fact, there are many different varieties of acquired dyslexia. They result from damage to different regions of the brain and involve deficiencies in different components of the reading or spelling process. There has been quite a lot of research into acquired dyslexia in recent years, but this type of disability is not dealt with in this book. The reader interested in finding out more about acquired dyslexia should consult Marshall and Newcombe (1973) or Coltheart, Patterson and Marshall (1980).

The other broad category of reading and spelling disabilities, which involves failure to acquire these skills initially, is the topic of this book. These are generally known as developmental disabilities. Several types of developmental disabilities can be distinguished. First, there is a distinction between the child who is poor at reading but also generally backward intellectually, and the child who is poorer at reading than would be expected from his or her general intellectual performance.

Rutter and Yule (1975) have used the term general reading backwardness to refer to the child whose reading disability occurs in the context of overall poor performance and the term specific reading retardation to describe the child with a disability specifically in reading. As an example, a child who is mentally retarded and poor at reading would fall into the category of general reading backwardness, while a child who is intellectually bright but has not achieved as expected in reading would fall into the category of specific reading retardation. The concept of specific reading retardation is somewhat similar to the popular concept of developmental dyslexia. However, it has a number of advantages over the traditional dyslexia concept. Undoubtedly the major advantage is that it is not so loosely and vaguely defined. Rutter and Yule (1975) have proposed a quite stringent method for defining specific reading retardation using a child’s scores on reading achievement and intelligence tests. The other advantage of the concept of specific retardation is that it does not carry any connotations that the deficit necessarily has a purely biological basis, as the concept of dyslexia seems to.

A further distinction which can be drawn is between those children who are good at reading single words but fail to comprehend text adequately, and those who are poor at both reading single words and comprehending text. This distinction has been made by Cromer (1970) who uses the term difference poor reader to refer to the children deficient in comprehension but not in single word reading. This terminology reflects the fact that these children exhibit a difference between their performance at reading comprehension and their performance at reading single words. Cromer refers to the children with problems on both single words and comprehension as deficit poor readers, but this concept appears to be basically similar to Rutter and Yule’s (1975) specific reading retardation. In this book, we will use the simple term comprehension disability to refer to readers whose deficit is specific to reading comprehension.

These various types of developmental reading disability are summarised in Table 1.1. As can be seen from this table, the different types of reading disability vary according to how general or specific the problem is. General reading backwardness involves problems in both reading comprehension and reading single words as well as low overall intelligence. Specific reading retardation involves problems with both aspects of reading, but normal ability in other respects. Lastly, comprehension disability involves problems specifically in the area of reading comprehension, with adequate reading of single words and adequate intelligence.

So far we have only dealt with different types of reading disability. However, we can also distinguish between types of developmental spelling disability. As might be expected, children with spelling difficulties generally have problems with reading as well. However, there is a small minority of children whose spelling performance is far worse than one would expect from someone of their reading ability. The children whose spelling difficulties are also accompanied by a reading disability will be referred to as reading-and-spelling retardates, while the children with difficulties specifically in spelling will be referred to as spelling-only retardates. The characteristics of these two types of spelling disability are summarised in Table 1.2. These two varieties of spelling disability obviously overlap with the varieties of reading disability summarised in Table 1.1. For example, children who are specific reading retardates will generally also be reading-and-spelling retardates. The differing terminology is used depending on whether the primary focus of concern is the reading disability or the spelling disability. Hereafter, the terminology most appropriate for the topic of discussion (reading or spelling) will be used, without any implication that two entirely different disabilities are being discussed.

Table 1.1 Varieties of disability in reading

	Deficiencies present
Type of disability	Intelligence	Reading of single words	Comprehension of text
General reading backwardness	Yes	Yes	Yes
Specific reading retardation	No	Yes	Yes
Comprehension disabilities	No	No	Yes

In the remaining chapters of this book, each of these types of reading or spelling disability is examined in detail. We will attempt to clarify which components of the normal reading or spelling process are deficient in these types of disabilities and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface and acknowledgments
• 1 Varieties of reading and spelling disability
• 2 Specific reading retardation: The social context
• 3 Specific reading retardation: The nature of the reading deficit
• 4 Specific reading retardation: The nature of the cognitive deficit
• 5 Specific reading retardation: Brain development
• 6 Reading comprehension disabilities
• 7 Spelling disabilities
• 8 Remediation, prediction and prevention
• References
• Index