Influence of position of the context sensitive graphemes and word frequency effect on reading speed: a performance analysis of developmental dyslexics and fluent readers

Abstract

Several studies have reported how the presence of contextual letter-sound conversion rules influences both reading speed and accuracy and the effect of rule complexity holds for low frequency words only. We aimed to investigate the role of orthography complexity and, in particular, of context sensitive graphemes position and frequency of use on reading speed, analyzing the performance of developmental dyslexics and fluent readers. With regard to speed (reading speed of word lists), context sensitive graphemes position had an effect only for dyslexic children, who showed the worst performance if the context sensitive graphemes were in first position, regardless of word frequency. On the other hand, we found a frequency effect (in particular worst performance in the case of low frequency words) for both groups.