Issues in Direct Application of Adult Cognitive Neuropsychology to Developmental Dyslexia

—Surface and/or Phonological Dyslexia—

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify issues arising from the direct application of a model using adult cognitive neuropsychology to children with developmental dyslexia. The participants were seven children with developmental dyslexia. One child, who showed no phonological disorder, manifested symptoms suggestive of phonological dyslexia in reading Hiragana and Katakana. Meanwhile, developmental dyslexic children with phonological disorders showed symptoms resembling surface dyslexia based on the criterion of the discrepancy between the correct percentage of nonwords and irregular words read. The findings suggest that a number of contradictions may arise if we apply adult cognitive neuropsychology to developmental dyslexia directly. We also noted that some points in this report need further investigation in the near future: significantly more cases, well-controlled stimuli, use of reading age (RA), etc.