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The goal of the present study was to ascertain whether developmental dyslexics and their affected parents evinced similar patterns of deficits in word recognition skills. Forty dyslexic children and both their biological parents were administered a battery of experimental measures of phonological and orthographic processing. Deficits in component skills were defined in terms of deviations from the performance of normal readers matched on reading achievement level. Four distinct patterns of deficits were found among both the dyslexics and their parents: a subgroup with a specific deficit in processing phonological codes; a subgroup with a specific deficit in processing orthographic codes; a subgroup with deficits in processing both phonological and orthographic codes; and a subgroup of individuals who did not significantly differ from normal readers at the same reading level in either processing domain. Although limited evidence for familial subgroup concordance was obtained in both the phonological and combined phonological subgroups, no concordance was observed among families classified into the orthographic or reading-achievement equivalent subgroups. It was concluded that all affected family members shared a propensity for a phonological deficit, and that some family members share a fundamental problem in processing orthographic information as well.

In this paper we apply a developmental model of reading to the question of dyslexic subtypes. Groups of normal readers (n=40) and dyslexic children (n=50), matched on reading level and IQ, were given a comprehensive test battery measuring level of development of visual, phonological, and orthographic skills. As a group, dyslexics deviated from normal readers of equivalent reading achievement primarily in phonological skills (spelling-to-sound translation and phonemic analysis), although limited differences in knowledge of word-specific spellings were also observed. Dyslexics were superior to the younger normal readers in visual processing of print. Analysis of individual data by reference to the reading level control group revealed three major subgroups: a group with a specific deficit in phonological processing of print (52 percent), a group with deficits in processing both the phonological and orthographic features of printed words (24 percent), and a group with phonological deficits in language (8 percent). The remainder of the sample (16 percent) had specific deficits in visual or orthographic processing of print, in spelling, or did not differ from the control group. The data support the view that most developmental dyslexics have a specific language disorder involving some aspect of phonological processing. However, small subgroups with very different configurations of reading and nonreading difficulties may exist as well.