Adolescent weak decoders writing in a shallow orthography: process and product

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Torrance, M. ORCID: 0000-0002-5305-4315, Rønneberg, V., Johansson, C. and Uppstad, P.H., 2016. Adolescent weak decoders writing in a shallow orthography: process and product. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20 (5), pp. 375-388. ISSN 1088-8438

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2016.1205071

Abstract

It has been hypothesised that students with dyslexia struggle with writing because of a word level focus that reduces attention to higher level textual features (structure, theme development). This may result from difficulties with spelling and/or from difficulties with reading. 26 Norwegian upper secondary students (M = 16.9 years) with weak decoding skills and 26 age-matched controls composed expository texts by keyboard under two conditions: normally and with letters masked to prevent them reading what they were writing. Weak decoders made more spelling errors and produced poorer quality text. Their inter key-press latencies were substantially longer pre-word, at word-end, and within-word. These findings provide some support for the word-level focus hypothesis, although we found that weak decoders were slightly less likely to engage in word-level editing. Masking did not affect differences between weak decoders and controls indicating that reduced fluency was associated with production rather than monitoring what they had produced.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Scientific Studies of Reading

Creators:

Torrance, M., Rønneberg, V., Johansson, C. and Uppstad, P.H.

Publisher:

Routledge

Date:

2016

Volume:

Number: