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

2. Issue
More students start higher education with a diagnosis of dyslexia
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

3. Issue Need for clarification, guidelines, and regulations
No general standards for compensatory measures based on scientific evidence

4. Issue
There is little solid advice about how students can 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

5. 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

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

8. 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

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

10. 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)

11. 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)

12. Tests

13. Tests

14. Tests

15. Tests
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

16. Results There are no differences in fluid intelligence (d = .1).
Dyslexic students are slower than controls in processing speed but they do not make more errors (d = .1).
Except for phonological short-term memory (d = .6), memory spans are quite comparable (d < .4).

17. Results
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.

18. Results Sentence level did not add anything to word level
L2 processing did not add anything
Nonword naming did not add anything (language-specific?)

19. 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.

20. Optimising assessment protocols
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)

21. 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.

22. Conclusions
Dyslexic students particularly fail in processing speed, not in accuracy.
They did not make many more errors in reading and other tasks, except for writing.
Students with dyslexia tended to perform better on the text comprehension test when the text was read out.
Three tasks captured all systematic variance in our study

23. A practical guide

24. A practical guide Much attention for legibility
rather easy writing
no citations
resumé in bullets
Relevant topics for HE students
Tips and trics to increase chances for academic success

25. Content What is dyslexia? When does someone have dyslexia?
What causes dyslexia?
How to recognize dyslexia?
How to diagnose dyslexia?
Does dyslexia influence study skills?
Do students with dyslexia have problems with writing?

26. Content Does dyslexia influence foreign language learning?
Is there a relation between dyslexia and personality?
How do students with dyslexia perform in higher education?
Which compensations are helpful for students with dyslexia?

27. How do students with dyslexia perform in higher education
Same chance for academic success
Longer study duration
More chance for change of study field
Same factors predict academic success
What can help?
Better information
special attention for study choice process
Insight in own strenghts and weaknesses
Awareness about the importance of good study skills

28. Which compensations are helpful for students with dyslexia?
Made to measure and not one size fits all
Few evidence-based compensations but:
more time (30%)
Use of a calculator
Use of laptop with spelling checkers and/or text-to-speech software
Active involvement of all partners increase chances to success!

29. Thanks for your attention!
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