Comparative Analysis of Phonological Awareness, Visual Memory, and Word Naming Speed in Perceptual and Linguistic Dyslexic Students with Typically Developing Peers

Dyslexia, a common learning disability, affects students' reading and language processing abilities. This study compared phonological awareness, visual memory, and word naming speed among students with perceptual and linguistic developmental dyslexia and their typically developing peers.

Methods and Materials:

 This descriptive, causal-comparative study included all first and second-grade male and female students in Ferdows during the 2023-2024 academic year. A total of 45 students were selected through purposive sampling, divided into three groups of 15. The research instruments included Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Farsi Reading Ability Assessment Test - Level 1 (Pouretemad et al., 2013), the Special Learning Disorder Screening Questionnaire (Alizadeh et al., 2014), the Phonological Awareness Assessment Test (Soleimani and Dastjerdi Kazemi, 2014), two literacy and numeracy subtests, the naming speed subtest from the 5th edition of Wechsler's Intelligence Scale for Children (Karmi & Karmi, 2014), and Andre Ray's scrambled pictures test (1942). Data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance with SPSS version 25.

The results indicated significant differences in cognitive variables (phonological awareness, visual memory, and word naming speed) between perceptual and linguistic dyslexic groups. Additionally, typically developing children differed from dyslexic students across all three variables.

The findings suggest that students with linguistic dyslexia exhibit poorer performance in phonological awareness and visual memory compared to both perceptual dyslexics and typically developing children. Furthermore, perceptual dyslexics demonstrated weaker word naming speed compared to linguistic dyslexics and typically developing peers.