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Liliane SPRENGER-CHAROLLES (CNRS-Paris V)Acquisition of reading and writing skills and dyslexia: Review of the literature2003, Vol. VIII-1, pp. 63-90
The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the processes involved in reading/spelling acquisition as well as possible explanations of developmental pathologies. Results obtained in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian are examined. All these languages have alphabetic spelling systems but differ as to the "transparency" of the grapheme-phoneme relationship. The results of these studies enable to separate the parameters common to different languages from those that are language-specific both in the acquisition of reading and spelling and in the genesis of dyslexia. The review of the literature also allows to sustain a strong phonological hypothesis, namely that the successes and failures specific to reading (and spelling) depend on the one hand on the transparency of the grapho-phonological relations in the writing system and, on the other hand, on the quality of the phonemic representations of the subject
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Sylviane VALDOIS (Grenoble 2)Assessing difficulties in the acquisition of reading2010, Vol. XV-1, pp. 89-103
Improvement of knowledge about the cognitive mechanisms involved in skilled reading and reading acquisition contributed to the development of new tools for the assessment of reading disability. A first step of the assessment focuses on the efficacy of the global and analytic reading procedures. Evidence for disharmonious development of these procedures then requires investigating the cognitive mechanisms involved in their establishment. Phonological processing skills are then typically assessed because of their well-known impact on reading acquisition. Recent findings have shown that the integrity of another cognitive mechanism, the visual attention span, was also required for the normal development of the reading system.
Dyslexia