Linguistic and non-linguistic prosodic skills in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia.

BACKGROUND: The deficit on segmental phonology in developmental dyslexia is well established and according to recent studies this deficit extends to suprasegmental phonology or prosody. However, these studies have focused on word-level prosody. Further research is needed concerning prosodic deficit in dyslexia, especially with a Spanish-speaking population. AIMS: The aim of this study was to investigate the role of linguistic (word and phrase-level) and non-linguistic prosodic skills in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia. METHOD AND PROCEDURE: 48 Spanish children (8-9 years of age) from ten primary education schools were selected (24 children with developmental dyslexia and 24 chronological age-control children). Non-linguistic rhythm, word and phrase-level prosody, phonological awareness, nonverbal intelligence and reading aloud were assessed. RESULTS: The results obtained show that children with developmental dyslexia scored lower than typically developing readers on non-linguistic rhythm and word and phrase-level prosody tasks. The differences remained statistically significant at the phrase level after controlling for word-level processing (phonological or prosodic), phonological awareness, non-linguistic rhythm and reading skills. CONCLUSIONS: Children with developmental dyslexia in Spanish exhibit a core deficit in suprasegmental phonology, at linguistic and non-linguistic levels. The implications of suprasegmental phonology skills for reading acquisition disabilities are discussed.

Priming stress patterns in word recognition.

This study addresses the lexical representation of stress in a series of 5 intramodal and cross-modal priming experiments in the Greek language using lexical decision tasks with auditory and visual targets. Three-syllable primes and targets were matched in first syllable segments, length, and other variables, and differed segmentally in the second and third syllable. Primes matched or mismatched targets in stress, which was placed on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable. There was no evidence for stress priming in either accuracy or latency of responses to either words or pseudowords in any of these experiments, either intramodally or cross-modally. In contrast, a control fragment priming experiment using only the first 2 syllables of the primes produced a significant effect of stress congruence for words but not for pseudowords. The results are interpreted in the context of previous findings in the literature as arising from lexical activation rather than from matching stress patterns. Overall, findings are consistent with lexical representations including stress information that is inseparable from segmental specification, rather than with abstract representations of metrical templates. (PsycINFO Database Record

Math anxiety and its relationship to inhibitory abilities and perceived emotional intelligence / Ansiedad matemática y su relación con capacidades inhibitorias e inteligencia emocional percibida

Math anxiety has been found to be an emotional problem that has a negative effect on students’ academic performance across different levels of education. This type of anxiety could be related to certain cognitive and emotional processes. A first objective was to examine the relationship between math anxiety and certain inhibitory abilities responsible of eliminating intrusive thoughts or preventing them access to consciousness. A second aim was to determine the extent in which math anxiety and students’ self-perceptions of their own emotional abilities are related. To this end, 187 first-year undergraduate psychology students were administered different measures to assess math anxiety, statistics anxiety, inhibitory abilities, and perceived emotional intelligence. The results showed that students with high math anxiety were more likely to experience intrusive thoughts, were less effective at suppressing these thoughts, and reported lower scores in understanding and regulating their emotions. These cognitive mechanisms and emotional abilities are of relevance to better understand the nature of this type of anxiety

La ansiedad a las matemáticas es un problema emocional que repercute negativamente en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes en distintos niveles educativos. El presente estudio analiza la relación entre este tipo de ansiedad y ciertos procesos cognitivos y emocionales. En primer lugar se pretendía determinar la relación entre la ansiedad a las matemáticas y ciertas habilidades inhibitorias dirigidas a eliminar o evitar el acceso a la conciencia de pensamientos intrusivos. En segundo lugar, interesaba comprobar la posible relación de la ansiedad a las matemáticas con la propia percepción del estudiante de sus habilidades emocionales. A tal fin se administraron a 187 estudiantes de primer curso del Grado de Psicología diferentes medidas de ansiedad a las matemáticas, a la estadística, de habilidades inhibitorias y de inteligencia emocional percibida. Los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes con puntuaciones más altas en ansiedad a las matemáticas presentaban una mayor susceptibilidad a experimentar pensamientos intrusivos, una menor eficacia a la hora de suprimirlos así como puntuaciones inferiores en comprensión y regulación de sus emociones. Los procesos inhibitorios y emocionales estudiados pueden resultar útiles para entender la naturaleza de la ansiedad matemática

Impaired stress awareness in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia.

The role of segmental phonology in developmental dyslexia (DD) is well established (e.g., deficit in phonological awareness), but the role of suprasegmental phonology (prosody) has been less widely investigated. Stress is one of the main prosodic features and refers to the relative prominence of syllables (strong/weak) within a word. The aim of the present study is to examine stress awareness in children with dyslexia and the possible mediation of phonemic awareness on suprasegmental phonological skills. Thirty-one Spanish children with DD and 31 chronological age-control children participated. Two stress awareness tasks were administrated, one with words and another with pseudowords. Results show that the children with dyslexia performed more poorly on both tasks than control children. The pattern of results in accuracy and reaction time suggest that, while children without difficulties use different strategies depending on the type of item, the children with dyslexia employ the same strategy to resolve the two tasks without any benefit of lexical knowledge about stress. Even so, this strategy did not work so efficiently as it did in the control group, which led the group with dyslexia to make a greater number of mistakes. It was also found that, when phonemic awareness was entered as a covariate, accuracy differences disappeared, but only in the word stress task. However, when lexical knowledge was not necessary (as in the pseudoword stress task) differences still remained statistically significant. Implications on the importance of suprasegmental processing in reading acquisition disabilities are discussed.

Prosodic awareness skills and literacy acquisition in Spanish.

There has been very little research in Spanish on the potential role of prosodic skills in reading and spelling acquisition, which is the subject of the present study. A total of 85 children in 5th year of Primary Education (mean age 10 years and 9 months) performed tests assessing memory, stress awareness, phonological awareness, reading and spelling. In written language tests, errors were classified as phonological (grapheme-to-phoneme conversion rules) or stress-related (placement of the stress mark). Regression analyses showed that, once memory and phonological awareness were controlled, stress awareness partially explained reading and spelling performance as well as error type; however, differences were found between reading and spelling errors. These results show a relationship between prosodic skills--namely stress sensitivity--and the acquisition of reading and spelling skills that seems to be independent of phonological awareness skills.

Procesamiento silábico y acento en español / Syllabic processing and lexical stress in Spanish

El estudio del componente fonológico del lenguaje puede hacerse tanto sobre sus elementos simples (rasgos distintivos y fonemas) como sobre la forma en que estos se combinan en elementos más complejos. En el primer caso se habla de fonología segmental y en el segundo, de fonología suprasegmental o prosodia. La investigación psicológica se ha centrado casi exclusivamente en el estudio del procesamiento que se realiza en el primero de estos dos niveles, así como en el procesamiento silábico. El resto de los aspectos de la fonología suprasegmental, como el acento léxico o la entonación, entre otros, han recibido mucha menos atención. En este trabajo se hace una revisión de algunas de las investigaciones más recientes que tratan sobre el acento léxico y su relación con el procesamiento silábico de las palabras. De igual modo, se discuten las implicaciones prácticas de dichos trabajos, principalmente en lo relativo al aprendizaje de la lectura (AU)

The study of the phonological component of language can be related to its simple elements (distinctive features and phonemes), or to the way these elements are combined into more complex units. The first case refers to segmental phonology, the second to suprasegmental phonology or prosody. Psychological research has mainly focused on studying the processing at the first of these two levels, as well as on the syllabic processing. The remaining aspects of phonology, as lexical stress or intonation, among others, have been paid much less attention. This work makes a review of some of the most recent studies on lexical stress and its relationship with syllabic processing of words. Furthermore, practical implications of those works are discussed, mainly in relation to reading acquisition (AU)