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Phonological and visual processing deficits can dissociate in developmental dyslexia: Evidence from two case studies

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Abstract

The present study describes two Frenchteenagers with developmental reading andwriting impairments whose performance wascompared to that of chronological age andreading age matched non-dyslexic participants.Laurent conforms to the pattern of phonologicaldyslexia: he exhibits a poor performance inpseudo-word reading and spelling, producesphonologically inaccurate misspellings butreads most exception words accurately. Nicolas,in contrast, is poor in reading and spelling ofexception words but is quite good atpseudo-word spelling, suggesting that hesuffers from surface dyslexia and dysgraphia.The two participants were submitted to anextensive battery of metaphonological tasks andto two visual attentional tasks. Laurentdemonstrated poor phonemic awareness skills butgood visual processing abilities, while Nicolasshowed the reverse pattern with severedifficulties in the visual attentional tasksbut good phonemic awareness. The presentresults suggest that a visual attentionaldisorder might be found to be associated withthe pattern of developmental surface dyslexia.The present findings further show thatphonological and visual processing deficits candissociate in developmental dyslexia.

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  1. Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale (UMR 5105, CNRS), Université Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble, France

    Sylviane Valdois, Marie-Line Bosse, B. Ans & S. Carbonnel

  2. Laboratoire Cogni-sciences et Apprentissage, IUFM et Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France

    Michel Zorman

  3. Service de Neuropsychologie, CHU Nord et Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France

    D. David & Jacques Pellat

  4. Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale (UMR 5105 CNRS), Université de Savoie, Chambéry, France

    S. Carbonnel

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Valdois, S., Bosse, ML., Ans, B. et al. Phonological and visual processing deficits can dissociate in developmental dyslexia: Evidence from two case studies. Reading and Writing 16, 541–572 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025501406971

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