Impact of phonological processing skills on written language acquisition in illiterate adults

Cognitive assessment of literacy learning difficulties in adult non- or low-literate second language learners

The population of non- or low-literate adult immigrants studying a new language is large and growing in many countries. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a new instrument for the assessment of cognitive impairment that may hinder literacy learning in adult non- or low-literate L2 learners, the Cognitive Assessment of Literacy Learning Difficulties (CALL), in a language center setting. This was a case-control study in which the CALL was validated in adult non- or low-literate students, or students who were not literate in the Latin alphabet, in nine Danish language centers. Educator classification of students with very slow progression in learning basic Danish literacy was used as a benchmark for literacy learning difficulties. Classification was further based on the number of lessons participants had required to pass tests during Danish language program levels. An acceptable discriminative validity (AUC 0.76; specificity 0.94, sensitivity 0.64) for literacy learning difficulties (n = 32) versus schooling and sex matched control participants (n = 28) was found. In comparison, years of formal schooling had an AUC of 0.58. Age had a small effect on the ability of the CALL to predict literacy learning difficulties (OR = 1.097, p = 0.013), whereas sex and years of schooling did not. CALL was found to be a valid instrument for identification of cognitive impairment that may hinder literacy learning in adult non- or low-literate L2 learners in a Danish language center setting.

Phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and reading of functionally illiterate adults

PURPOSE

The study's purpose is to describe the cognitive profile of a sample of functionally illiterate individuals in reading, phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN), as well as to correlate the performance of these tasks. Moreover, it sought to understand how the performances in PA and RAN predict results in reading of words and pseudowords.

METHODS

23 functionally illiterate adults were assessed for intelligence, reading, PA and RAN tasks.

RESULTS

Participants showed difficulties in PA, performing poorly in tasks involving phoneme analysis and manipulation. In RAN, they found it easier to name alphanumeric items. Regarding reading, they presented difficulties in phonological processing, with errors caused by phonological exchange. Correlation analyses indicated that reading presented higher correlations with RAN than PA. Finally, a regression analysis indicated that performance in RAN can account for more than half of participants' reading results.

CONCLUSION

In general, the profile of functionally illiterate adults presents impairment in the abilities assessed that are more evident in PA at phoneme levels as well as in naming of non-alphanumerical items. Moreover, the results in RAN explain those in word and pseudowords reading better than the results in PA.

Functional illiteracy and developmental dyslexia: looking for common roots. A systematic review

A considerable amount of the population in more economically developed countries are functionally illiterate (i.e., low literate). Despite some years of schooling and basic reading skills, these individuals cannot properly read and write and, as a consequence have problems to understand even short texts. An often-discussed approach (Greenberg et al. 1997) assumes weak phonological processing skills coupled with untreated developmental dyslexia as possible causes of functional illiteracy. Although there is some data suggesting commonalities between low literacy and developmental dyslexia, it is still not clear, whether these reflect shared consequences (i.e., cognitive and behavioral profile) or shared causes. The present systematic review aims at exploring the similarities and differences identified in empirical studies investigating both functional illiterate and developmental dyslexic samples. Nine electronic databases were searched in order to identify all quantitative studies published in English or German. Although a broad search strategy and few limitations were applied, only 5 studies have been identified adequate from the resulting 9269 references. The results point to the lack of studies directly comparing functional illiterate with developmental dyslexic samples. Moreover, a huge variance has been identified between the studies in how they approached the concept of functional illiteracy, particularly when it came to critical categories such the applied definition, terminology, criteria for inclusion in the sample, research focus, and outcome measures. The available data highlight the need for more direct comparisons in order to understand what extent functional illiteracy and dyslexia share common characteristics.

Reading and Phonological Awareness in Africa

Literacy levels in Africa are low, and school instruction outcomes are not promising. Africa also has a disproportionate number of unschooled children. Phonological awareness (PA), especially phoneme awareness, is critically associated with literacy, but there is little evidence about whether PA is gained through literacy, schooling, or both, because most children studied are in education and can read at least letters. Our previous study of PA and reading in children in and out of school in Tanzania found that PA was associated with reading ability, not schooling or age, and many unschooled children learned to read. We retested 85 children from the baseline study, on measures of PA and literacy, approximately 2 years later. We found that more unschooled children had now learned to read but PA had generally not improved for these children. Unschooled children were still poorer at PA than schooled children. At 2 years, schooling now independently predicted PA and literacy. PA also predicted literacy and vice versa. Explicit phoneme awareness was again poor, even in accurate readers. More unschooled children have now learned to read, possibly because local literacy is in their first language; however, schooling improves reading and PA.

A clinical and demographic comparison between a forensic and a general sample of female patients with schizophrenia

Diagnoses of psychiatric diseases do not include criminal behavior. In schizophrenia, a non-negligible subgroup is incarcerated for capital and other crimes. Most studies that compared offender and non-offender patients with schizophrenia have only focused on male patients. With this study, we compared demographic and disease-related characteristics between 35 female incarcerated forensic patients (fSZ) and 35 female inpatients with schizophrenia (SZ). Basic clinical documentation and basic forensic clinical documentation revealed significant clinical and demographic differences between the two groups. Compared to SZ, fSZ were more severely clinically impaired, showing higher rates of comorbid alcohol and substance disorder, more suicide attempts, had more previous hospitalizations, and were younger at disease onset. Regarding demographic variables, fSZ showed a higher rate of unemployment and homelessness and had to rely more often on housing and legal guardianships compared to SZ. These results suggest that female forensic patients with schizophrenia are more severely affected by clinical and non-clinical variables requiring an adapted intervention program. These results may also indicate two developmental trajectories for criminal and non-criminal schizophrenia in females.