Predictors of exception word and nonword reading in dyslexic children: The severity hypothesis.

Griffiths, Yvonne M., Snowling, Margaret J.·2002·Journal of Educational Psychology

Abstract

The classification of dyslexic children into discrete subtypes yields a poor description of the dyslexic population at large. Multiple regression methods were used to examine continuous variation in component reading subskills (nonword and exception word reading) and their underlying cognitive skills within a group of 59 9-15 year-old dyslexic children. Two measures of phonological skills contributed unique variance to nonword reading: phonological processing and verbal short-term memory skills. In contrast, the only unique predictor of exception word reading was reading experience. The results are discussed within a connectionist framework that views the decoding deficit in dyslexia as stemming from poorly specified phonological representations. The extent of the nonword reading deficit is determined by the severity of the underlying phonological impairment. In contrast, exception word reading is influenced more by print exposure.

Cites (4)

  1. Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains.
    Plaut, David C., McClelland, James L., Seidenberg, Mark S., Patterson, Karalyn · 1996 · Psychological Review
  2. Phonological recoding and orthographic learning: a direct test of the self-teaching hypothesis
    Share, David L. · 1999 · Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
  3. Tracking the unique effects of print exposure in children: Associations with vocabulary, general knowledge, and spelling.
    Cunningham, Anne E., Stanovich, Keith E. · 1991 · Journal of Educational Psychology
  4. Not all nonwords are alike: Implications for reading development and theory
    Treiman, Rebecca, Goswami, Usha, Bruck, Maggie · 1990 · Memory & Cognition

Show all 4 references

Cited by (13)

  1. Specific reading disability (dyslexia): what have we learned in the past four decades?
    Vellutino, Frank R., Fletcher, Jack M., Snowling, Margaret J., Scanlon, Donna M. · 2004 · Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
  2. Developmental Dyslexia and Specific Language Impairment: Same or Different?
    Bishop, Dorothy V. M., Snowling, Margaret J. · 2004 · Psychological Bulletin
  3. To read or not to read: a meta-analysis of print exposure from infancy to early adulthood
    Mol, Suzanne E., Bus, Adriana G. · 2011 · Psychological Bulletin
  4. Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: A meta-analytic review.
    Melby-Lervåg, Monica, Lyster, Solveig-Alma Halaas, Hulme, Charles · 2012 · Psychological Bulletin
  5. Developmental dyslexia: The visual attention span deficit hypothesis
    Bosse, Marie-Line, Tainturier, Marie Josèphe, Valdois, Sylviane · 2007 · Cognition

See all 220

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Predictors of exception word and nonword reading in dyslexic children: The severity hypothesis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0022-0663.94.1.34
The paper
Griffiths, Y. M., & Snowling, M. J. (2002). Predictors of exception word and nonword reading in dyslexic children: The severity hypothesis. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-0663.94.1.34

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.