Examining the double-deficit hypothesis in an orthographically consistent language
Torppa, M., Georgiou, G., Salmi, P., Eklund, K., & Lyytinen, H. (2012). Examining the double-deficit hypothesis in an orthographically consistent language. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16 (4), 287-315. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2011.554470
Published in
Scientific Studies of ReadingDate
2012Discipline
PsykologiaCopyright
© 2012 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. This is a final draft version of an article whose final and definitive form has been published by Taylor & Francis (Routledge). Published in this repository with the kind permission of the publisher.
We examined the double-deficit hypothesis in Finnish. One hundred five Finnish children with high familial risk for dyslexia and 90 children with low family risk were followed from the age of 3½ years until Grade 3. Children's phonological awareness, rapid naming speed, text reading, and spelling were assessed. A deficit in rapid automatized naming (RAN) predicted slow reading speed across time and spelling difficulties after Grade 1. A deficit in phonological awareness predicted difficulties in spelling, but only in the familial risk sample. The effect of familial risk was significant in the development of phonological awareness, RAN, reading, and spelling. Our findings suggest that the basic premise of the double-deficit hypothesis—that RAN and phonological awareness are separable deficits with different effects on reading and spelling outcomes—holds also in a consistent orthography.