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The Effect Of Reading Abilities On Dyslexia Over The Past Four Decades

Decent Essays

This journal paper presented by Vellutino and his associates outlines the most important findings of research that evaluates possible causes of reading abilities in dyslexia over the past four decades. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of research on the fundamental cause(s) of developmental dyslexia. The secondary purpose is to present the evidence that reveals the differences between early reading difficulties caused mainly by cognitive/biological deficits and those caused primarily by instructional deficits. The authors first propose a model that captures all the relevant knowledge and cognitive skills required for individuals in learning to read (Figure 1). This model certainly indicates that reading is mainly a linguistic ability rather than once popular notion that it is primarily a visual skill. The model that underscores all reading components are thus used to analyze manifest causes of reading difficulties. The evidence suggests that basic deficits in alphabetic coding would lead to inadequate word identification and which then contributes to reading difficulties. Moreover, both phonological awareness and orthographic awareness have an impact on the skills of alphabetic coding. Importantly, casual relationships between word identification difficulties and deficient phonological skills seem more prominent in learning to read in opaque orthographies such as English than in learning to read in more transparent orthographies such as

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