01 NRDC Dyslexia 1-88 update - Texthelp

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Research Report
is likely to prove (Fawcett, 2002). Many tutors but fewer researchers believe that successful
learning can be achieved (Scarborough, 1984). Even after intensive tutoring in phonics, some
learners continue to experience difficulty in reading regular new words (Felton et al., 1990). A
developmentally dyslexic adult’s decoding problem may be difficult to overcome, because the
core phonological deficit is more severe in dyslexic readers than in ‘ordinary’ poor readers
(Stanovich, 1988), so students with severe and profound difficulties will need a high allocation
of resources (Fawcett, 2002). However, even one-to-one tuition may have no significant impact
on the skills of the least able readers unless it contains very explicit and intensive instruction
in phoneme awareness and phonemic decoding skills (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Rose,
Lindamood, Conway, & Garvan, 1999).
That said, it could be misleading to apply a reading disability model to an adult learning to
read who performs poorly on phonological awareness tests (Perfetti & Marron, 1995). These
learners will not necessarily have serious difficulty in acquiring phonological awareness and,
with it, an analytical approach to language. A more serious problem for them may be the need
to abandon effortful but inefficient non-analytic strategies (such as trying to memorise all
words by sight) prompted by their early difficulties (McGuinness, 1998; Perfetti, Georgi, &
Beck, 1993), as those difficulties may have led to maladaptive self-beliefs (Chapman et al.,
2001) and to other behavioural, motivational, and cognitive consequences (Pumfrey & Reason,
1991; Stanovich, 1986).
One of those consequences might be limited verbal working memory capacity. For adult
dyslexics seeking help, difficulties with memory are typically the central problem (Fitzgibbon
& O’Connor, 2002). The nature of the association between reading ability and working
memory has been unclear (Kramer et al., 2000; Wadsworth et al., 1995); working memory
difficulties may be symptoms of other problems rather than problems in themselves (Hulme
& Roodenrys, 1995). These difficulties may appear to be specialised within the reading
process (Caplan & Waters, 1999), or they may extend beyond reading into other domains
(Swanson & Sachse-Lee, 2001). Recent evidence suggests, however, that the working
memory deficits seen in dyslexia indicate constraints on a general capacity system which
appear to be quite independent of reading skill and to be lifelong (Swanson, 2003). Whatever
their origin, verbal working memory difficulties create a vicious cycle in which the laborious
effort to decode a word reduces learning from successful trials; less efficient learning leads
to reduced component skill automaticity; and this, in turn, limits both the quality of
subsequent learning opportunities and efficiency at all levels of the reading process (Sabatini,
2002).
For intervention to be successful, adult students need to acquire analytic strategies in wordrecognition
and to abandon effortful but inefficient non-analytic strategies.
Even with explicit and intensive teaching, some students may make slow progress.
Students who make good progress are likely to have been wrongly identified as dyslexic.
Limitations in the intervention research
The intervention research, which is almost exclusively concerned with children, reveals a
number of limitations (Abadzi, 1994; Lyon & Moats, 1997). These limitations make it very
difficult to derive useful guidance for adult literacy tutors.