Phonological and orthographic processing in basic literacy adults and dyslexic children

The aim of the present study was to examine the hypothesis that, compared to typically reading children matched on regular word reading, adults with basic literacy (either adult literacy students or adult basic education students) struggle on phonologically demanding tasks but are relatively performant on orthographic demanding tasks, and hence present a performance pattern similar to that of dyslexic children. Using various reading and phoneme awareness tests, we therefore compared the adults to both typically reading children from Grades 3 and 4 and dyslexic children, these two groups being matched to the adults on regular word reading. The dyslexic children were also compared to either chronological age- or reading level-matched children. The hypothesis was only partly supported by the data, as results depended on the subgroup of adults considered. While the literacy students presented poorer phoneme awareness and a somewhat stronger length effect in reading than the dyslexic children, the basic education students outperformed the latter on irregular word reading. The adults, and in particular the literacy students, also relied frequently on orthography in a complex phoneme awareness task. Taken together, these results suggest that adults with basic literacy rely more on visual memory than both dyslexic and typically reading children. This opens the question of whether the peculiar profile of these adults is intrinsic to adult literacy acquisition or is related to the way they are taught and trained to read and write. The results also highlight the need for better characterization of subgroups of adults with basic literacy.