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Research indicates that reader perceptions of writing quality are highly dependent on an author’s ability to spell accurately (Kreiner et al, 2002). This is an especially important consideration for university students who are often assessed on the quality of their written work and are typically soon to be competing for jobs with written applications. However, poor spelling among English-speaking university students is well documented (Holmes & Castles, 2001; Benyo, 2014; Ocal & Ehri, 2017). The serious implications of poor spelling and the high incidence of poor spelling among university students, suggest it may be beneficial for higher education curricula to have greater emphasis on spelling instruction. However, research indicates that remedial training on the mechanical aspects of writing (such as spelling) is rare at universities, even for students with literacy disabilities such as dyslexia (Tops et al, 2013). This study therefore aims to test the efficacy of a spelling intervention known as 'spelling pronunciations'. Spelling pronunciations are the result of decoding a word with irregular grapheme-phoneme correspondences in a way that reflects the regular pronunciation of those graphemes. They are theorised to add an additional/variant phonological representation (with a closer relationship to the written form of the word) into the mental lexicon and are thus thought to increase an individual’s likelihood of remembering the correct spelling (Elbro & de Jong, 2017). Prior investigation has indicated that spelling pronunciations are an effective intervention technique among university students (Ocal & Ehri, 2017). This study aims to extend this work by examining the efficacy of spelling pronunciations and comparing two different implementation techniques: self-generated spelling pronunciations versus other-generated spelling pronunciations. We posit that an individuals' ability to effectively generate and use spelling pronunciations may be dependent on their phonological decoding skills, thus we aim to also investigate any relationship between decoding ability and spelling pronunciation instructional method.

Following cerebellar tumour surgery, children may suffer impairments of spontaneous language. Yet, the language processing deficits underlying these impairments are poorly understood. This study is the first to try to identify these deficits for four levels of language processing in cerebellar tumour survivors. The spontaneous language of twelve patients who underwent cerebellar tumour surgery (age range 3–24 years) was compared against his or her controls using individual case statistics. A distinction was made between patients who experienced postoperative cerebellar mutism syndrome (pCMS) and those who did not. Time since surgery ranged between 11 months and 12;3 years. In order to identify the impaired language processing levels at each processing level (i.e., lexical, semantic, phonological and/or morphosyntactic) nouns and verbs produced in the spontaneous language samples were rated for psycholinguistic variables (e.g., concreteness). Standard spontaneous language measures (e.g., type-token ratio) were calculated as well. First, inter-individual heterogeneity was observed in the spontaneous language outcomes in both groups. Nine out of twelve patients showed language processing deficits three of whom were diagnosed with pCMS. Results implied impairments across all levels of language processing. In the pCMS-group, the impairments observed were predominantly morphosyntactic and semantic, but the variability in nature of the spontaneous language impairments was larger in the non-pCMS-group. Patients treated with cerebellar tumour surgery may show long-term spontaneous language impairments irrespective of a previous pCMS diagnosis. Individualised and comprehensive postoperative language assessments seem necessary, given the inter-individual heterogeneity in the language outcomes.

This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to answer the following questions in relation to the effectiveness of morphological instruction for primary school children in English-speaking countries: 1. Does morphological instruction improve children’s outcomes on measures of reading accuracy, reading fluency and spelling containing trained words? 2. Does morphological instruction result in generalisation to tasks containing untrained words, and to measures of far transfer such as reading comprehension? 3. Does the effectiveness of instruction differ depending on child factors such as age, reading ability or linguistic background, and instructional factors such as group size, amount of instructional time, type of instructor, or the nature (e.g., active vs. passive) and content (e.g., reading and/or language instruction vs non-linguistic instruction) of the control condition?

The aim of this systematic review is to identify which domain-specific skills at the beginning of formal schooling best predict mathematical achievement later on in primary school.

The present study aims to conduct a systematic review of the available evidence on the impact of school-based teaching on spelling skills of English-speaking primary school students.

The aim of this systematic review is to document scientific literature on the eye tracking patterns observed during reading in children with developmental dyslexia, readers of alphabetic orthographies.

The present study aims to conduct a systematic review of the available evidence on the impact of school-based teaching on spelling skills of English-speaking primary school students.

Published peer-reviewed article available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-020-09566-6

The aim of this systematic review is to synthesise the literature on the spoken and written language outcomes in children who underwent posterior fossa surgery for the removal of a posterior fossa tumour.

Mathematics learning difficulty is a term frequently used to refer to children that struggle to acquire mathematical knowledge and skills. The percentage of children who present with a mathematics learning difficulty is estimated to be between 3 and 9% (Desoete et al., 2004; Morsanyi et al., 2018; Reigosa-Crespo et al., 2012) depending on the inclusion criteria used. During childhood, children who present with mathematics learning difficulties often struggle with math-related work at school as well as with daily life activities such as reading a clock or shopping (Vanmeirhaeghe, 2012). In adulthood, low levels of mathematical knowledge and skills pose a risk to an individual’s finances, employability, and mental health (Butterworth, 2010). Several factors have been associated with difficulties in the acquisition of mathematics knowledge and skills, such as lack of appropriate educational opportunities, sensory disorders (i.e., low vision or hearing), genetic syndromes (i.e., Turner syndrome), neurodevelopmental (i.e., intellectual disability) or neurological disorders (i.e., cerebral palsy). When mathematics learning difficulties cannot be better explained by any of these factors, it is likely that they constitute a specific learning disorder in mathematics. Several challenges exist for the study and diagnosis of mathematics learning difficulties. Some of these challenges are likely due to the use of different terms (i.e., mathematics (learning) disabilities, (developmental) dyscalculia and specific learning disorder in mathematics) or inconsistencies among definitions (van Luit, 2019). Other challenges may be due to the variability of skills considered in the diagnostic process and different cut-off points used (Nelson & Powell, 2018). This study has two aims. The first aim is to better understand the consequences that different assessment tools and cut-off criteria can have on the identification of children with mathematics learning difficulty. The research questions arising from the first aim are: 1.How do the mathematical skills assessed impact the identification of children with mathematics learning difficulty? 2.How do the cut-off criteria chosen impact the identification of children with mathematics learning difficulty? 3.How does the combination of mathematical skills assessed and cut-off criteria chosen impact the identification of children with mathematics learning difficulty? The second aim is to better understand the mathematical and cognitive profiles of children that are identified as presenting with a mathematics learning difficulty. The research questions for the second aim are: 4. How do children who present with a mathematics learning difficulty differ from typically achieving students in their number sense skills? 5. How do children who present with a mathematics learning difficulty differ from typically achieving students in their cognitive profile? References: Butterworth, B. (2010). Foundational numerical capacities and the origins of dyscalculia. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(12), 534-541. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.09.007 Desoete, A., Roeyers, H., & De Clercq, A. (2004). Children with Mathematics Learning Disabilities in Belgium. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(1), 50–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222194040370010601 Morsanyi, K., van Bers, B. M., McCormack, T. &and McGourty, J. (2018)., The prevalence of specific learning disorder in mathematics and comorbidity with other developmental disorders in primary school‐age children. Br J Psychol, 109, 917-940. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12322 Nelson, G. & Powell, S. R. (2018). A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies of Mathematics Difficulty. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(6), 523–539. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219417714773 Reigosa-Crespo, V., Valdés-Sosa, M., Butterworth, B., Estévez, N., Rodríguez, M., Santos, E., Torres, P., Suárez, R. & Lage, A. (2012) Basic numerical capacities and prevalence of developmental dyscalculia: the Havana Survey. Dev Psychol, 48(1), 123-135. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025356 Van Luit, J. E. H. (2019). Diagnostics of Dyscalculia. In: Fritz, A., Haase, V. G. & Räsänen, P. International Handbook of Mathematical Learning Difficulties. From the Laboratory to the Classroom. Springer. Vanmeirhaeghe, B. (2012) Divided by Numbers – Studying with Dyscalculia [Documentary]. Artvelde University College Ghent. https://www.studerenmetdyscalculie.be/contact-en

Potentiophones are irregular words that, when phonologically decoded, produce the phonological form of another words (e.g., shone, which is pronounced ‘shown’ if phonologically decoded). The Self-Teaching Dual Route Cascaded (ST-DRC) model of reading (Pritchard, Coltheart, Marinus & Castles, 2018) predicts that potentiophones will be particularly difficult to learn. If potentiophones are challenging to learn, this may produce a processing cost that endures. Therefore, in this study, we compare adults' processing of potentiophones compared to matched non-potentiophone irregular words.

This systematic review investigated how successful children/adolescents with poor literacy skills learn a foreign language compared with their peers with typical literacy skills. Moreover, we explored whether specific characteristics related to participants, foreign language instruction, and assessment moderated scores on foreign language tests in this population. Overall, 16 studies with a total of 968 participants (poor reader/spellers:n = 404; control participants:n = 564) met eligibility criteria. Only studies focusing on English as a foreign language were available. Available data allowed for meta-analyses on 10 different measures of foreign language attainment. In addition to standard mean differences (SMDs), we computed natural logarithms of the ratio of coefficients of variation (CVRs) to capture individual variability between participant groups. Significant between-study heterogeneity, which could not be explained by moderator analyses, limited the interpretation of results. Although children/adolescents with poor literacy skills on average showed lower scores on foreign language phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and reading comprehension measures, their performance varied significantly more than that of control participants. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent group differences between the foreign language scores of children/adolescents with poor and typical literacy skills are representative of individual poor readers/spellers. Taken together, our results indicate that foreign language skills in children/adolescents with poor literacy skills are highly variable. We discuss the limitations of past research that can guide future steps toward a better understanding of individual differences in foreign language attainment of children/adolescents with poor literacy skills.

The aim of this systematic review is to identify which domain-specific skills at the beginning of formal schooling best predict mathematical achievement later on in primary school.

Surface dyslexia is characterised by poor reading of irregular words while nonword reading can be completely normal. Previous work has identified several theoretical possibilities for the underlying locus of impairment in surface dyslexia. In this study, we systematically investigated whether children with surface dyslexia showed different patterns of reading performance that could be traced back to different underlying levels of impairment. To do this, we tested 12 English readers, replicating previous work in Hebrew (Gvion & Friedmann, 2013; 2016; Friedmann & Lukov, 2008; Friedmann & Gvion, 2016). In our sample, we found that poor irregular word reading was associated with deficits at the level of the orthographic input lexicon and with impaired access to meaning and spoken word forms after processing written words in the orthographic input lexicon. There were also children whose surface dyslexia seemed to be caused by impairments of the phonological output lexicon. We suggest that further evidence is required to unequivocally support a fourth pattern where the link between orthography and meaning is intact while the link between orthography and spoken word forms is not functioning. All patterns found were consistent with dual route theory while possible patterns of results, which would be inconsistent with dual route theory, were not detected. Crown Copyright (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background: Identifying reading comprehension difficulties is challenging. There are many comprehension tests to choose from, and a child’s diagnosis can be influenced by various factors such as a test’s format and content and the choice of diagnostic criteria. We investigate these issues with reference to the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA) and the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC).Methods: Ninety-five children were assessed on both tests. Test characteristics were compared using Principal Components and Regression analyses as well as an analysis of passage content.Results: NARA comprehension scores were more dependent on decoding skills than YARC scores, but children answered more comprehension questions on the NARA and passages spanned a wider range of difficulty. Consequently, 15-34% of children received different diagnoses across tests, depending on diagnostic criteria.Conclusion: Knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of comprehension tests is essential when attempting to diagnose reading comprehension difficulties.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of treatment studies of acquired dysgraphia and the occurrence of generalisation after this treatment. The aim is to examine what determines the occurrence of generalisation by investigating the link between the level of impairment, the method of treatment, and the outcome of therapy. We present the outcomes of treatment with regard to generalisation in 40 treatment studies. We derive general principles of generalisation which provide us with a better understanding of the mechanism of generalisation: (1) Direct treatment effects on representations or processes; (2) interactive processing and summation of activation; and (3) strategies and compensatory skills. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the cognitive processes used for spelling. Finally, we provide suggestions for the direction of further research into this important area, as a better understanding of the mechanism of generalisation could maximise treatment effects for an individual with acquired dysgraphia.