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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Reading, numbers and learning differences
Real words can be recalled, and a strong memory will lift a score without the skill underneath being there at all. A word that has never existed leaves nothing to recall, so what you are watching is the sound system working or not working. In a profile where everything else has been pulled upwards by effort, this is one of the few places the difficulty stays visible. Say what you are doing and why, since being asked to fail at something out loud is uncomfortable.
Am I not better than this contemptible wretch who can scarcely express himself (Quran 43:52) is Pharaoh's line, and the Qur'an puts the sneer in the tyrant's mouth. Testing a person at the precise point they find hardest asks for real gentleness in how you go about it.
الزخرف
أَمۡ أَنَا۠ خَيۡرࣱ مِّنۡ هَٰذَا ٱلَّذِي هُوَ مَهِينࣱ وَلَا يَكَادُ يُبِينُ
Am I not better than this contemptible wretch who can scarcely express himself
Qur’an 43:52read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The multiple deficit account of dyslexia, set out in a theoretical review, holds that several interacting factors are involved and that children with the same diagnosis differ from one another, which is why assessment has to look at components rather than one summary score. This is a model rather than a validation study of any particular measure. It does explain why a task aimed narrowly at sound processing can tell you something a broad reading score cannot.
van Bergen E, van der Leij A, de Jong PF. (2014). The intergenerational multiple deficit model and the case of dyslexia.. Frontiers in human neuroscience doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
You cannot remember a word you have never heard, so the task has to be done with the sounds alone.
This is one measure among several, so a poor score is a reason to look further rather than a conclusion by itself.
Before adding more content, look at what the child has to receive it with: attention, memory for what was just said, language. Two children given the same lesson do not take away the same amount, and that difference is usually where the real gap sits.
Pouring more in does not help while the lid is still on. A child who is exhausted, wound up or not yet settled will keep very little of the lesson, however good the lesson is.
In practice, you sometimes have to stop a child using the trick that has kept them afloat, so the weaker skill finally gets used. Expect them to hate it for a while.