Cognitive profile of higher education students with dyslexia Wim Tops Maaike Callens Marc Brysbaert

Issue An increasing number of postsecondary students start higher education with a diagnosis of dyslexia. However, relatively little is known about this group, except for the assumption that they have worse reading and writing skills. Is particularly true for non-English speaking countries

Issue Great need for clarification, guidelines, and regulations. No general standards for compensatory measures based on scientific evidence. Clinical experience of the local office of disability services and their considerations tend to prevail.

Issue In the absence of theoretical and empirical evidence for the efficacy of the special measures, lecturers object that: – “dyslexic” students may be asking needless exceptions – which create extra work, – and are unfair to the other students. Some lecturers even doubt whether students with a diagnosis of dyslexia belong in higher education, questioning their cognitive skills and work attitude.

Issue Also for students with reading disabilities the lack of empirical evidence is a problem – there is little solid advice about how to optimize their studies – manuals based on clinical and educational practice rather than empirical evidence – nearly all focus on English (orthographic depth, differences in educational policies)

Cognitive profile of HE students with dyslexia in English 1990s: studies addressing the question whether individuals with dyslexia continue to have problems with reading and spelling in adulthood, or whether remediation teaching and reading practice in primary and secondary education are able to bridge the initial lag Conclusion: reading and writing problems remain

Cognitive profile of HE students with dyslexia in English Hatcher, Snowling, and Griffiths (2002) – compared the cognitive skills of 23 university students with dyslexia and 50 matched controls – participants completed 17 tasks assessing: literacy (reading and writing), processing skills (perceptual speed, memory span, and arithmetic), phonological skills (spoonerisms and rapid naming), verbal fluency, verbal abilities (vocabulary test), non-verbal abilities (Raven matrices), self-reported problems in attention and organization.

Cognitive profile of HE students with dyslexia in English Hatcher, Snowling, and Griffiths (2002) – The dyslexic students performed worse on all but the two tasks of general cognitive abilities (WAIS vocabulary and Raven matrices). – Expressed as an effect size

Hatcher et al. (2002) L ITERACY Word reading1.14 Now-word reading1.47 Word spelling1.31 Text writing1.12 P ROCESSING SKILLS Perceptual speed0.89 Short-term memory span1.05 P HONOLOGICAL SKILLS Phonological processing1.32 Rapid naming1.19 V ERBAL FLUENCY Semantic fluency0.46 Rhyme fluency1.26 G ENERAL INTELLIGENCE Arithmetic0.58 Vocabulary0.10 Problem solving / reasoning-0.01

Hatcher et al. (2002) Dyslexic students further reported more problems with – Memory: “I easily forget about what has been said”, – Attention: “I lose track in required reading”, – Effort: “I do not work to my potential”, – Affect: “I am sensitive to criticism”, – Organizing and activating: “I have difficulty getting organized and started”

Meta-analysis Swanson and Hsieh (2009) – 52 published articles – 776 comparisons

S&H09HSG02 L ITERACY Reading comprehension 1.20 Word reading Now-word reading Word spelling Text writing P HONOLOGICAL SKILLS Phonological processing Rapid naming G ENERAL INTELLIGENCE Arithmetic General intelligence 0.20 Verbal intelligence 0.63 Vocabulary General information 0.47 Problem solving / reasoning Verbal memory 0.62

S&H09 Visuospatial memory-0.39 Cognitive monitoring 0.27 Perceptual motor skills-0.13 Auditory perceptual-0.18 Visual perceptual 0.13 Social and personal skills 0.10 Personality 0.28 Neuropsychological (e.g., EEG)-0.02 Ratings by third persons-0.23

Replication Hatcher et al. (2002) Other language and educational system (university access regulations) A wider range of tasks – Strengths? – Heterogeneity? – L2? Samples large enough to detect everything that is interesting (d >.40) controls

A new study 200 first bachelor students – Dutch native speakers – Normal or corrected to normal vision Allows us to find effect sizes from d =.4 These are effect sizes that start to require special arrangements

A new study

Participants 100 students with assessment of dyslexia – Both university and non-university – Mean age Comorbidity was no exclusion

Participants

Diagnosis of dyslexia based on 3 criteria according to the Dutch Dyslexia Foundation (SDN, 2008) – Clinical scores on word reading and/or spelling – Resistance to instruction – Exclusion

Participants 100 controls – With no known neurological or functional deficiencies – Matched on field of study, age and gender

Participants

A new study Tests – IQ (KAIT: fluid vs. crystallized intelligence) – Speed of processing (selective attention and task switching) – Word reading (one minute test in Dutch and English) – Nonword reading (one minute)

Tests

A new study Tests – Test for Advanced Reading and Spelling Various STM spans Phonological awareness (spoonerism & reversals) Rapid naming (various stimuli) Vocabulary Text reading (aloud) Text comprehension (visual and auditory presentation) Word spelling – English word spelling – Arithmetic (four operations)

Tests

A new study Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI; Lacante & Lens, 1999) Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Hoekstra, Ormel, & de Fruyt, 2007) based on the big five – Extraversion – Neuroticism – Agreeableness – Openness – Conscienciousness

Tests

Results reading Word reading Dutch (EMT) Total number read words1.87 Number of errors0.67 Correctly read words1.97 Word reading English (OMT) Total number read words1.36 Number of errors0.59 Correctly read words1.40 Pseudoword reading (de Klepel) Total number read words1.50 Number of errors0.44 Correctly read words1.59 Reading text aloud (GL&SCHR) Substantial errors0.98 Time consuming errors0.64 Reading time1.29 Silent text reading for comprehension (Tekenbeet) Words per minute1.13 Text comprehension (GL&SCHR)0,47

Results writing Word spelling Dutch (GL&SCHR) Weighted score word spelling 2.28 Correct word spelling 2.05 Writing speed 0.43 Proofreading 1.08 Word spelling English (WRAT) Correctly spelled words 1.50 Sentence writing (AT-GSN) number of errors 2.10 Morphology and syntax (GL&SCHR) Weighted score 0.91 Total score 0.87

Results phonological processing Phonological awareness (GL&SCHR) Number correct spoonerisms 0.70 Spoonerisms time 1.42 Number correct reversals 1.00 Reversals time 1.30

Results rapid naming Rapid naming (GL&SCHR) Letters1.02 Digits1.05 Colours0.81 Objects0.24

Results IQ General Intelligence (KAIT) Total IQ0.38 Crystallized IQ0.55 Fluid IQ0.13 Definitions0.75 Auditory comprehension0.09 Double meanings0.43 Famous persons0.35 Symbol learning0.07 Logical reasoning0.12 Secret codes-0.13 Block patterns-0.17 Symbol memory0.03 Auditory memory0.37

Results attention Processing speed (CDT) Working pace0.90 Concentration0.67 Number of errors0.09 Number of missed digits0.14

Results memory span Short term memory STM phonemes0.71 STM shapes0.28 STM words0.30 Memory with sorting0.45

Results arithmetic Mental calculation (TTR) Total number calculations1.05 Addition0.97 Subtraction0.61 Multiplication0.90 Division1.00 Mixed operations1.12

Results Personality NEO-PI-R Neuroticism 0.26 Extraversion 0.19 Openness 0.09 Altruism Conscientiousness -0.14

Results study strategies Learning and study strategies inventory (LASSI) Attitude Motivation 0.31 Time management Fear of failure Concentration 0.37 Information processing Selection of main ideas Study competence 0.31 Self evaluation 0.20 Test strategies -0.10

Interim conclusions The differences on the IQ test are negligible and particularly caused by definitions to words (d =.6). There are no differences in fluid intelligence (d =.1). Dyslexic students tend to be slower than controls in processing speed (as measured with the CDT; d =.6), but they do not make more errors (d =.1). Except for phonological short-term memory (d =.6), memory spans are quite comparable (d <.4).

Interim conclusions There is considerable dyslexia cost for arithmetic (d ≈ 1), which tends to be larger for divisions and multiplications than for subtractions. There is a considerable cost (d ≈ 1) for phonological processing due to the speed of processing, not to the accuracy of processing. There are no differences in the personality and study strategies inventory.

Optimising assessment protocols Two sessions of 3 hours What’s the minimum we need for good assessment? Hatcher et al. (2002): About 95% of the students could be classified correctly on the basis of four tests only: spelling, word reading, verbal short term memory, and writing speed.

Optimising assessment protocols Post-diction vs. prediction (Ockham’s hill; Gauch, 2002) Classification with 10-fold cross validation resampling method (Kuhn, 2008) 3 variables: 91% prediction – Dutch word reading, – Dutch word spelling – phonological awareness task (reversals time)

Writing skills beyond spelling Simple informative text about tick bites (written for 13-year olds) Participants were asked to read the text silently and to write a summary (no time limits) Summaries blindly scored by teachers: – Handwriting quality – Quality of texts (typed and corrected for spelling errors)

Writing skills beyond spelling Handwriting (Likert-scale 1 – 5) – Dyslexia: 2.63 – Control: 2.79 – d =.15 (n.s.) Text quality: – No significant structural differences (words used, sentence length, …) except for number of long words used

Writing skills beyond spelling Judgment text quality by teachers General score (Likert 1-7): – 4.85 vs (d =.4*) No significant differences for conciseness, vocabulary, and sentence structure Difference due to text structure and text agreeability

General conclusions Despite the differences in language and educational context, our findings are remarkably similar to those in English. The pattern of strengths and weaknesses of students with reading disabilities is very much the same in Dutch. This is good news, because it indicates that the profile is applicable to most alphabetical languages.

General conclusions Our findings are further noteworthy because they agree well with the traditional definition of dyslexia as a combination of normal intelligence with deficient reading and writing. This definition has been questioned in the past years, partly because a discrepancy between verbal and general abilities is very difficult to measure reliably at individual level.

General conclusions Dyslexic students in higher education particularly fail in processing speed, not in accuracy. They did not make many more errors in reading and other tasks, except for writing. Also encouraging is the finding that students with dyslexia tended to perform better on the text comprehension test when the text was read out.

General conclusions Three tasks captured all systematic variance in our study – Sentence level did not add anything to word level – L2 processing did not add anything – Nonword naming did not add anything (language-specific?)

Special arrangements Software that helps with reading and writing. Extra time for exams. Use of calculator (?) Training in higher-order writing skills Better information for students themselves, so that they can adapt their studies to their weaknesses and strengths.

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