The phonological deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia

Abstract

The phonological deficit hypothesis in developmental dyslexia wasexamined with readers in Chinese, a nonalphabetic script. Fifty-sixChinese children with dyslexia (23 of whom had reading and writingdifficulties and 33 had reading problems only) were compared withaverage readers of the same age (CA controls) and average readers of thesame reading-level (RL controls) in phonological awareness andphonological memory skills. The results showed that the Chinese dyslexicchildren with both reading and writing difficulties performedsignificantly worse than their CA controls and RL controls in nearly allthe phonological tasks, whereas those with reading problems only,performed significantly less well than their CA controls, but similarlywith their RL controls. These findings suggest that Chinese childrenwith dyslexia have deficits in processing phonological information liketheir alphabetic counterparts.