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Abstract
The current study investigated the capacity of a new test assessing phonological awareness to detect differences between Italian children with and without developmental dyslexia. Specifically, the task involves blending of a list of pseudo-words, and excludes lexical knowledge as a source of task performance. Fifty-four third to fifith Italian graders were presented a battery of tests assessing phonological awareness, reading, writing, and verbal short-term memory abilities. A multivariate analysis of covariance, with age as a covariate, revealed that proficient readers outperformed students with developmental dyslexia in all cognitive measures considered, except verbal short-term memory. Moreover, high concordance was found between the new pseudo-word blending task, and well-known word blending, writing, and reading tests, respectively. In conclusion, the new phonological awareness task seems to be a useful tool for the detection of poor blending abilities of Italian children and thus it could be used to screen phonological awareness in primary schools. Implications for school psychology research and practice, including across linguistic contexts, are emphasized; for example, the new blending task could aid discrimination of proficient and dyslexic readers speaking other languages characterized by a transparent orthography, such as Greek, Spanish, Turkish.
Keywords assessment, dyslexia, Italian, phonological awareness, primary school
References
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Author biographies
Maria Chiara Fastame is Assistant Professor in Developmental Psychology at the University of Cagliari, Italy. Her research interests include the study of the efficiency of verbal and visuo-spatial functions across the life span. A further research area in which Dr Fastame is involved concerns the effect of specific psycho-educational trainings for the empowerment of non-verbal and numeracy abilities in children attending kindergarten and primary school, as well as the assessment of phonological awareness in children with and without dyslexia.
Anna Cardis is a speech therapist and received a master's degree in psychology at the University of Cagliari, which was based on a thesis about phonological awareness and reading skills in children attending primary school under the supervision of Dr Fastame. Recently she attended a postgraduate masters course about the diagnosis and treatment of specific learning disabilities discussing a thesis on the assessment of reading and phonological awareness in children with and without dyslexia.
Daniela Callai is a teacher for typically developing children and students with special educational needs attending primary school. She attended a postgraduate master course about specific learning disabilities at the University of Cagliari, discussing a thesis about the empowerment of visuo-spatial abilities under the supervision of Dr Fastame. At present, she is collaborating with Dr Fastame to conduct studies on the assessment and empowerment of cognitive abilities underpinning academic achievements.
