Ricerc@Sapienza

In a previous study (Zoccolotti et al., 2020) we examined reading, spelling, and maths skills in an unselected group of 129 Italian children attending fifth grade by testing various cognitive predictors; results showed a high degree of predictors’ selectivity for each of these three behaviors. In the present study, we focused on the specificity of the predictors by performing cross-analyses on the same dataset; i.e., we predicted spelling and maths skills based on reading predictors, reading based on maths predictors and so on.

This study examined the ability to master lexical processing and use knowledge of the relative frequency of sound–spelling mappings in both reading and spelling. Twenty-four dyslexic and dysgraphic children and 86 typically developing readers were followed longitudinally in 3rd and 5th grades. Effects of word regularity, word frequency, and probability of sound–spelling mappings were examined in two experimental tasks: (a) spelling to dictation; and (b) orthographic judgment. Dyslexic children showed larger regularity and frequency effects than controls in both tasks.