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Contains fulltext : 285184.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) In this study, we investigated which spelling cues are used in word-medial consonant spelling by learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Previous research has shown that native speakers of English rely on different cues to decide whether a single ("diner") or double consonant ("dinner") needs to be used in word-medial consonant spelling. These cues include phonology, orthography, morphology and lexical frequency. We investigated whether these cues play a similar role in Dutch spellers who are EFL learners, next to similarity of the English target to Dutch. We analyzed dictation task data that was part of an unsupervised digital learning environment for EFL learning. The error analyses revealed that novice EFL spellers mainly used phonological and cross-linguistic cues in consonant doubling. In contrast, more proficient spellers relied less on phonological cues, and relied on morphological cues instead. The EFL spellers did not rely on orthographic cues. Furthermore, spelling difficulty was influenced by the frequency of a word and its similarity with the native-language equivalent, in terms of cognate status (non-cognate/cognate) and consonant doubling. Together, our findings indicate that a higher number of converging cues facilitates spelling for EFL spellers and that their reliance on cues changes as spelling proficiency increases. 43 p.

Contains fulltext : 226045.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) We assessed the relationship between word-to-text-integration (WTI) and reading comprehension in 7th grade students (n = 441) learning English as a second language (L2). The students performed a self-paced WTI reading task in Fall (T1) and Spring (T2), consisting of three text manipulation types (anaphora resolution, argument overlap, anomaly detection), divided in simple and complex passages. The passages contained proximate versus distant anaphora, explicit repetitions versus implicit inferences, and no anomalies versus anomalies. We first examined how WTI complexity was related to reading times on target, target plus one, and target plus two, controlling for word frequency, decoding fluency, gender, and age. Mixed-effects models showed shorter reading times on T2 than on T1 and for simple compared to complex passages, indicating improvement of L2 reading speed. Complexity affected WTI for our L2 learners, as was reflected by longer reading times on complex compared to simple argument overlap and anomaly detection passages. We then assessed whether reading comprehension could be predicted by WTI. Longer reading times on complex compared to simple argument overlap and anomaly detection passages predicted offline reading comprehension. These WTI-measures of complexity are thus indicators of WTI proficiency for novice L2 learners. 39 p.

Although a diagnosis of dyslexia is often made during elementary school, severe and persistent literacy difficulties of a considerable group of students are only noticed during secondary school. The question arises whether the literacy(-related) deficits of these late identified students with dyslexia differ from those of early diagnosed students. To address this question, 10th Grade Dutch secondary school students with early (n = 35) and late (n = 19) identified dyslexia and their peers with average to good literacy abilities (n = 24) were compared on literacy skills and underlying cognitive skills. At the group level, both students with an early and late diagnosis performed more poorly than their typical peers, but they did not differ from each other on (pseudo-)word reading, spelling and underlying cognitive correlates (phonemic awareness, rapid automatized naming and visual attention span). The early and late group contained comparable percentages of students performing poorly on most measures. There were, however, more students in the early group who showed deficits in phonemic awareness. Our results indicate that students with early and late diagnosed dyslexia are highly comparable. Suggestions for fitting interventions are discussed.

Purpose Children come to understand many words by the end of their 1st year of life, and yet, generally by 12 months, only a few words are said. In this study, we investigated which linguistic factors contribute to this comprehension–expression gap the most. Specifically, we asked the following: Are phonological neighborhood density, semantic neighborhood density, and word frequency (WF) significant predictors of the probability that words known (understood) by children would appear in their spoken lexicons? Method Monosyllabic words in the active (understood and said) and passive (understood, not said) lexicons of 201 toddlers were extracted from the Dutch Communicative Development Inventory ( Zink & Lejaegere, 2002 ) parent-completed forms. A generalized linear mixed-effects model was applied to the data. Results Phonological neighborhood density and WF were independently and significantly associated with whether or not a known word would be in children's spoken lexicons, but semantic neighborhood density was not. There were individual differences in the impact of WF on the probability that known words would be said. Conclusion The novel findings reported here have 2 major implications. First, they indicate that the comprehension–expression gap exists partly because the phonological distributional properties of words determine how readily words can be phonologically encoded for word production. Second, there are likely subtle and complex individual differences in how and when the statistical properties of the ambient language impact on children's emerging lexicons that might best be explored via longitudinal sampling of word knowledge and use.

The aim of this longitudinal study is to evaluate 3 views on the relationship between nonword repetition and vocabulary: (i) the storage-based view that considers nonword repetition, a measure of phonological storage, as the driving force behind vocabulary development, (ii) the lexical restructuring view that considers improvements in nonword repetition as the result of vocabulary growth, and (iii) the "combined" view that assumes that both storage-based learning and lexical restructuring play a role, resulting in reciprocal relationships between nonword repetition and vocabulary during language development. Data are analyzed from 471 monolingual Dutch children who performed tasks assessing nonword repetition and vocabulary at yearly intervals, from ages 2 to 5. Latent Change Score (LCS) modeling of Item Response Theory-scaled scores was used to investigate the relationships between nonword repetition and vocabulary growth over time. Additionally, the statistical techniques used in earlier work-cross-lagged and latent growth modeling-were applied to see whether the results changed as a function of the analytical technique used. Results from a bivariate LCS model showed positive reciprocal influences from nonword repetition on vocabulary between 2 and 5 years. Such positive cross-influences also emerged from the cross-lagged and latent growth models. Predictive relationships from vocabulary to nonword repetition were stronger than vice versa. These results indicate that both storage-based learning and lexical restructuring play a role in vocabulary learning, at least in early stages of language development, with the clearest support found for lexical restructuring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Spelling is influenced by implicit cues, but less is known about variability in this reliance. We assessed whether the influence of three implicit cues on Dutch past tense spelling was moderated by grade, literacy, and format. An Auditory infinitive, Written infinitive, and Picture+cloze format was completed by 68 third-graders and 47 sixth-graders. The implicit cues voicing probability and token frequency affected accuracy, especially in Grade 6 and in children with higher literacy skills. There was no task format effect. This shows that children’s inflection accuracy is affected by implicit cues, but the degree of reliance on these cues is variable.

Two explanations for resolving dyslexia were investigated, one assuming resolving underlying deficits and another assuming compensatory mechanisms based on cognitive strengths. Thirty-six Dutch gifted secondary-school students with either persistent (n = 18) or resolving (n = 18) dyslexia participated. Groups, matched on IQ, were assessed on dyslexia- and intelligence-related cognitive risk and protective factors. Findings for the risk factors showed support for both the resolving-deficit and compensatory-mechanism theories: Resolving and persistent groups were comparable on phoneme deletion and nonalphanumeric rapid automatized naming, but resolvers outperformed students with persistent dyslexia on spoonerisms and alphanumeric rapid automatized naming. For the protective factors, resolvers consistently showed more pronounced cognitive strengths in verbal areas relevant for literacy development, which is in line with the compensatory-mechanism theory. We conclude that, besides underlying deficits resolving to some extent, compensation is a plausible explanation for resolving literacy difficulties in gifted students.

The present study investigated the role of early oral language and family risk for dyslexia in the two developmental pathways toward reading comprehension, through word reading and through oral language abilities. The sample contained 237 children (164 at family risk for dyslexia) from the Dutch Dyslexia Program. Longitudinal data were obtained on seven occasions when children were between 4 and 12 years old. The relationship between early oral language ability and reading comprehension at the age of 12 years was mediated by preliteracy skills and word-decoding ability for the first pathway and by later language abilities for the second pathway. Family risk influenced literacy development through its subsequent relations with preliteracy skills, word decoding, and reading comprehension. Although performance on language measures was often lower for the family-risk group than for the no-family-risk group, family risk did not have a specific relation with either early or later oral language abilities.

According to the Integration of Multiple Patterns hypothesis (IMP; Treiman & Kessler, 2014), the spelling difficulty of a word is affected by the number of cues converging on the correct answer. We tested this hypothesis in children’s regular past tense formation in Dutch. Past tenses are formed by adding either-de or-te to a verb stem. Despite instruction, children often choose the wrong allograph. In a large dataset (227 items, together completed 392,802 times) from an online language program we assessed whether morphophonological and orthographic cues determine differences in difficulty and explain error patterns. Regression analyses established that inflection difficulty was affected by number of converging cues, especially morphophonological and orthographic cues. Error analyses further showed that allograph errors were prominent when graphotactic frequency and especially voicing probability collided with the correct answer. The results match and specify the IMP. Proposals are made to use this knowledge in educational practice.

Purpose This study assessed whether a categorical speech perception (CP) deficit is associated with dyslexia or familial risk for dyslexia, by exploring a possible cascading relation from speech perception to phonology to reading and by identifying whether speech perception distinguishes familial risk (FR) children with dyslexia (FRD) from those without dyslexia (FRND). Method Data were collected from 9-year-old FRD ( n = 37) and FRND ( n = 41) children and age-matched controls ( n = 49) on CP identification and discrimination and on the phonological processing measures rapid automatized naming, phoneme awareness, and nonword repetition. Results The FRD group performed more poorly on CP than the FRND and control groups. Findings on phonological processing align with the literature in that (a) phonological processing related to reading and (b) the FRD group showed the lowest phonological processing outcomes. Furthermore, CP correlated weakly with reading, but this relationship was fully mediated by rapid automatized naming. Conclusion Although CP phonological skills are related to dyslexia, there was no strong evidence for a cascade from CP to phonology to reading. Deficits in CP at the behavioral level are not directly associated with dyslexia.

Although a bilingual advantage has been reported for various measures of cognitive control, most previous studies have looked at a limited range of cognitive control measures. Furthermore, they typically leave unaddressed whether positive effects of bilingualism hold for all bilinguals or whether these are modulated by differences in bilingual language use and proficiency of children and their parents. This study reports on tasks of selective attention and inhibitory control from 24-month-old bilinguals (n = 37) and monolinguals (n = 58). Their parents completed a Dutch vocabulary checklist assessing receptive and productive vocabulary as well as questionnaires on children’s attentional focusing, attention shifting and inhibitory control, and language background. Linear mixed-effect regressions showed no differences on cognitive control between the monolinguals and bilingual groups. However, analyses taking into account differences in children’s bilingual language use and proficiency and of their parents revealed a more nuanced picture. Specifically, children’s degree of balanced language usage predicted parent-rated cognitive control. Furthermore, bilingual toddlers who had parents were low proficient in one of the home languages showed significantly better performance on a selective attention task than toddlers whose parents were both proficient in both home languages. These findings suggest that both children’s active usage of two languages and their experience with switching depending on their interlocutor are related to cognitive control performance in young bilingual children. As such, they add to a growing body of evidence that the bilingual advantage in cognitive control is tied to specific conditions of bilingualism, already at a young age.

This study addressed the question why vowel spelling acquisition is relatively difficult for young Dutch spellers. A spelling rule guides vowel spelling, but implicit cues could also play a role. We evaluated the role of phonology, morphology, and orthography. Grade 1 (N = 113) and 2 (N = 59) children were presented with dictations of real and pseudowords differing in the degree of consistency and familiarity. Correct scores of consistent vowel spelling in Grade 1 and 2 students were near ceiling, whereas those for inconsistent vowels were low, even in Grade 2 children, who have had explicit instruction of the spelling rule. Correct scores were affected by phonological and morphological consistency, and orthographic familiarity. Effects of these implicit cues were even more pronounced in Grade 2. Findings indicate that vowel length spelling is difficult to acquire because the explicit spelling rule is overruled by various sources of implicit information.

Academic accommodations associated with a diagnosis of dyslexia might be incentives for college students without reading or spelling difficulties to feign dyslexia and obtain the diagnosis unfairly. In the current study we examined malingering practices by comparing the performance of college students instructed to malinger dyslexia (n = 28) to that of students actually diagnosed with dyslexia (n = 16). We also included a control group of students without reading and spelling difficulties (n = 28). The test battery included tasks tapping literacy skills as well as underlying cognitive skills associated with literacy outcomes. These tasks are commonly used in diagnosing dyslexia. We examined patterns in the performance of malingerers across tasks and tested whether malingerers could be identified based on their performance on a limited number of tasks. Results indicated that malingerers scored significantly lower than students with dyslexia on reading and spelling skills; i.e., the core characteristics of dyslexia. Especially reading performance was extremely low and not in line with students' age and level of education. Findings for underlying cognitive skills were mixed. Overall, malingerers scored lower than students with dyslexia on tasks tapping mainly speed, whereas the two groups did not differ on tasks reflecting mainly accuracy. Based on word and pseudoword reading and letter and digit naming, the three groups could be distinguished with reasonable sensitivity and specificity. In all, results indicate that college students seem to understand on which tasks they should feign dyslexia, but tend to exaggerate difficulties on these tasks to the point where diagnosticians should mistrust performance.

This study examined the production of the Dutch past tense in Dutch–Hebrew bilingual children and investigated the effect of type of past tense allomorph (de versus te) and token frequency on productions of the past tense. Seven-year-old bilingual children (n=11) were compared with monolingual children: age-matched (n=30) and younger vocabulary-matched (n=21). Accuracy of regular and novel past tense was similar for the bilingual and monolingual groups, but the former group was worse on irregular past tense than the age-matched monolingual peers. All three groups showed effects of type frequency: te past tenses were more accurate than de. The difference between the bilingual and monolingual children surfaces in the extent of the effect: for the bilingual children it was most pronounced in verbs with low token frequency and novel verbs. Results are interpreted as stemming from a learning strategy or from phonological transfer from the Hebrew morphosyntactic system.

Purpose This study aimed to gain more insight into the relation between vocabulary and reading acquisition by examining early growth trajectories in the vocabulary of children at family risk (FR) of dyslexia longitudinally. Method The sample included 212 children from the Dutch Dyslexia Program with and without an FR. Parents reported on their children's receptive and expressive vocabulary size at ages 17, 23, 29, and 35 months using the Dutch MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. Dyslexia status at the end of Grade 2 (8 years) rendered 3 groups: FR-dyslexic ( n = 51), FR-nondyslexic ( n = 92), and typically developing–nondyslexic (TD) children ( n = 69). Results Repeated measures analyses showed that FR-dyslexic children had lower receptive vocabulary scores from 23 months onward and lower expressive scores from 17 months onward than FR-nondyslexic children. Latent growth curve modeling showed lower initial growth rates in FR-dyslexic children, followed by partial recovery, indicating a delayed increase in receptive and expressive vocabulary. FR-nondyslexic and TD children did not differ. Conclusions Early deficits in receptive and expressive vocabulary are associated with later reading. Early vocabulary growth of FR-dyslexic children is characterized by a delay but not deviance of growth. Vocabulary can be considered an additional risk factor for dyslexia.

This study assesses morpho-phonological alternation in plural formation by 5-year-old Dutch children with a familial risk of dyslexia, children with specific language impairment (SLI), and typically developing children. The morpho-phonological process investigated is the voicing alternation in Dutch singular–plural pairs such as bed [t] ‘bed’ ~ bedden [d] ‘beds’. Results on a plural formation task showed that the at-risk group, like the control group, produced more correct plurals in real words than the SLI group, and was sensitive to lexical frequency. However, the at-risk group patterned with the SLI group on nonword stimuli, repeating fewer correct singulars and producing fewer plurals. The SLI group's performance was further characterized by production difficulties affecting clusters, difficulties with morphological inflection, and possibly reduced sensitivity to lexical frequency and distributional patterns. These findings support the phonological deficit hypothesis of dyslexia and suggest that dysle...

Phonemes are perceived categorically and this perception is language-specific for adult listeners. Infants initially are "universal" listeners, capable of discriminating both native and non-native speech contrasts. This ability disappears in the first year of life. Maye et al. (Cognition (2002)) propose that statistical learning is responsible for this change to language-specific perception. They were the first to show that infants of 6 and 8 months old use statistical distribution of phonetic variation in learning to discriminate speech sounds. A replication of this experiment studied 10-11-month-old Dutch infants. They were exposed to either a bimodal or a unimodal frequency distribution of an 8-step speech sound continuum based on the Hindi voiced and voiceless retroflex plosives (/da/ en /ta/). The results show that only infants in the bimodal condition could discriminate the contrast, representing the speech sounds in two categories rather than one.

Using data from a case study presented in Chiat (1989), Marshall and Chiat (2003) compare two different approaches to account for the realization of intervocalic consonants in child phonology: "coda capture theory" and the "foot domain account". They argue in favour of the latter account. In this note, we present a reappraisal of this argument using the same data. We conclude that acceptance of the foot domain account, in the specific way developed by the authors, is unmotivated for both theoretical and empirical reasons. We maintain that syllable-based coda capture is (still) the better approach to account for the relevant facts.

It has been proposed that poor non‐word repetition is a marker of specific language impairment (SLI), and a precursor and marker of dyslexia. This study investigated whether a non‐word repetition deficit underlies both disorders. A group of Dutch preschool SLI children and children at familial risk of dyslexia, as well as school‐going groups of SLI and dyslexic children were presented with a non‐word repetition task. The results showed that the SLI and the (at‐risk of) dyslexia groups performed more poorly than the control children. Furthermore, with the exception of one child, all preschool SLI children scored significantly below the mean of the preschool control group, suggesting that non‐word repetition performance is a marker of SLI. Approximately half of the at‐risk group were poor performers, which was expected on the basis of the familial risk factor of the at‐risk group. The results show that a non‐word repetition deficit is attested early in life and underlies both dyslexia and SLI.

We investigated Dutch word stress acquisition in 3-year-old children at risk of dyslexia (children with at least one parent or older sibling with reading difficulties) and normally developing children, in order to shed light on language acquisition delays in children at risk of dyslexia, as well as to investigate further phonological deficits in dyslexia. The children had to repeat non-words with stress patterns varying in regularity. Both the at-risk and control children performed better on imitation of regular stress targets and worse on irregular and prohibited stress patterns. However, the at-risk children showed more difficulty imitating irregular and prohibited patterns, and had lower percentages phonemes correct than the control group. The results can be interpreted as a delay in word stress acquisition in the at-risk group. The findings thus point towards a phonological deficit early in language development.

We report on a prospective longitudinal research programme exploring the connection between language acquisition deficits and dyslexia. The language development profile of children at-risk for dyslexia is compared to that of age-matched controls as well as of children who have been diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI). The experiments described concern the perception and production of grammatical morphology, categorical perception of speech sounds, phonological processing (non-word repetition), mispronunciation detection, and rhyme detection. The results of each of these indicate that the at-risk children as a group underperform in comparison to the controls, and that, in most cases, they approach the SLI group. It can be concluded that dyslexia most likely has precursors in language development, also in domains other than those traditionally considered conditional for the acquisition of literacy skills. The dyslexia-SLI connection awaits further, particularly qualitative, analyses.

This study focuses on morphophonology and frequency in past tense production. It was assessed whether Dutch five- and seven-year-old typically developing (TD) children and eight-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) produce the correct allomorph in regular, irregular, and novel past tense formation. Type frequency of the allomorph, token frequency and phonotactic probability (PP) of the novel verb form are considered. The results showed all groups were sensitive to the phonological cue. PP did not contribute to past tense inflection of novel verbs in any of the groups, but type frequency did in all three groups. Only the seven-year-old typically developing children relied on token frequency for inflection of regulars. The findings point to an important role of phonology and frequency in past tense acquisition for both TD children and children with SLI. We discuss how the SLI performance pattern relates to theories on SLI.

This study tests the hypothesis that developmental dyslexia is (partly) caused by a deficit in implicit sequential learning, by investigating whether infants at familial risk of dyslexia can track non-adjacent dependencies in an artificial language. An implicit learning deficit would hinder detection of such dependencies, which mark grammatical relations (e.g. between ‘is’ and ‘-ing’ in ‘she is happily singing’). In a head-turn experiment with infants aged 1;6, family risk and typically developing infants were exposed to one of two novel languages containing dependencies of the type a-X-c, b-X-d or a-X-d, b-X-c, with fixed first and third elements and twenty-four different X elements. During test, typically developing children listened longer to ungrammatical strings (i.e. that did not correspond to their training language). However, family-risk children did not discriminate between grammatical and ungrammatical strings, indicating deficient implicit learning. The implications of these findings in relation to dyslexia and other language-based disorders are discussed.

This study related the non-word repetition (NWR) abilities of 4-year-old children at-risk of dyslexia and children with specific language impairment (SLI) to their reading abilities at age eight. The results show that the SLI group obtained the lowest NWR score and the at-risk group performed in-between the control and SLI group. Approximately half of the at-risk and SLI group showed reading difficulties. Literacy and NWR abilities were correlated for the at-risk group, but not for the SLI group. The findings point toward differences between the groups and suggest that dyslexia and SLI should not be treated as a similar disorder.

Speech perception and speech production were examined in 3-year-old Dutch children at familial risk of developing dyslexia. Their performance in speech sound categorisation and their production of words was compared to that of age-matched children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls. We found that speech perception and production performance of children with SLI and children at familial risk of dyslexia was poorer than that of controls. The results of the at-risk and SLI-group were highly similar. Analysis of the individual data revealed that both groups contained subgroups with good and poorly performing children. Furthermore, their impaired expressive phonology seemed to be related to a deficit in speech perception. The findings indicate that both dyslexia and SLI can be explained by a multi-risk model which includes cognitive processes as well as genetic factors. Learning outcomes: As a result of reading this paper the reader will be able to (1) learn about the relationship between language and literacy; (2) recognise that dyslexia and specific language impairment may show similar areas of language difficulties, and (3) understand that both disorders can be interpreted within a multirisk model, including cognitive processes as well as genetic factors.

Adult aging is frequently accompanied by hearing loss, as well as by cognitive decline. Both play a role in listeners' understanding of noisy, foreign-accented speech and fast conversational speech. Hearing loss leads to increased perceptual effort during listening, which affects memory encoding of the spoken message. Furthermore, some studies have suggested that acquired hearing loss also has long-term effects by degrading the quality or accessibility of phonological representations in long-term memory. This was investigated further by looking into non-word reading, thus bypassing immediate effects of hearing loss. A sample of 29 older adults, varying in degree of high-frequency hearing loss and visual digit span performance, saw 72 multisyllabic nonwords varying in phonotactic frequency (i.e., the phoneme-co-occurrence statistics of the language). They saw the nonwords for 5 seconds and were prompted to produce them from memory after another 3 seconds. As expected, response accuracy was influenced by phonotactic frequency of the nonword and digit span performance. Crucially, response accuracy was also higher if the participant had better hearing, supporting the claim that hearing loss degrades phonological representations in long-term memory. These results emphasize the broad consequences hearing loss has on language processing beyond its immediate effect on speech audibility.

This paper investigates stress assignment in Dutch aphasic patients in non-word repetition, as well as in real-word and non-word reading. Performance on the non-word reading task was similar for the aphasic patients and the control group, as mainly regular stress was assigned to the targets. However, there were group differences on the real-word reading and non-word repetition tasks. Unlike the non-brain-damaged group, the patients showed a strong regularization tendency in their repetition of irregular patterns. The patients' stress error patterns suggest an impairment in retention or retrieval of targets with irregular stress patterns. Limited verbal short-term memory is proposed as a possible underlying cause for the stress difficulties.

The present study compared the role of metrical stress in comprehension and production of three-year-old children with a familial risk of dyslexia with that of normally developing children. A visual fixation task with stress (mis)matches in bisyllabic words, as well as a non-word repetition task with bisyllabic targets were presented to the control and at-risk children. Results show that the at-risk group is less sensitive to stress mismatches in word recognition than the control group. Correct production of metrical stress patterns did not differ significantly between the groups, but the percentages of phonemes produced correctly were lower for the at-risk than the control group. The findings indicate that processing of metrical stress patterns is not impaired in atrisk children, but that the at-risk group cannot exploit metrical stress in word recognition.