Reading is one of the important skills that a person should learn.
It plays an important role in the life of a person. It affects the learning ability, comprehension, social, interpersonal and personal activities of a person. It also plays a vital role in the success of a person. Independence from other people on certain activities is also an advantage when a person knows how to read.
As an added advantage, reading plays a vital role in the success of a person.Indeed, reading is one of the best ways in acquiring knowledge. There are different factors that might affect the reading skills of a person. These factors include differentiation of letters, recognition of words, and comprehension of vocabulary.
Mehta and Swarup (2004) conducted a study relating perceptual linguistic skills of an individual to the individual’s reading ability. They have stated the following in their study: In order to read, a person must acquire a number of basic perceptual linguistic skills.These skills include firstly the ability to focus attention, to concentrate and follow directions, the ability to understand and interpret spoken language in daily life, auditory memory and sequencing, visual memory and sequencing, decoding and word attack, structural-contextual analysis of language, logical synthesis and interpretation of language, vocabulary development and expansion and the fluency in scanning and referencing. Inability to perform the mentioned perceptual and cognitive skills affects the reading skills of an individual.Due to this inability, there are people that have reading disorders. Reading disorder is characterized by having a hard time in identifying and inferring letters and words.
The phonic structure, which includes the sounds and syllables in certain words, is also not identified and translated by an individual having a reading disorder. As a result, the precision and comprehension skills of an individual are affected. However, there are others who claim that perceptual and cognitive skills are not the major factors affecting the reading disorder of an individual.Price and Devlin (2003) have presented evidences showing that people having reading disorders do not have impairment in their cognitive skills. The authors stated that people having reading disorders have the ability to interpret complex pictures. They can also recognize pictures in unconventional views.
People with reading disorders have also selective attention and visual short term memory. Price and Devlin (2003) disproved the theory relating cognitive skills and reading disorders through the evidences that were shown in their study.This essay will identify the researcher’s stand on whether reading disorders are caused by impairment in the cognitive skills of an individual or not. There are several different types of reading disorders. Phonological alexia is a syndrome in which there is impairment in pronouncing legal non-words but has the ability to read it.
Previous accounts have argued that the disorder arises from an impairment to the rule-governed grapheme-to-phoneme procedure or assembled spelling route and is thus highly specific to processes of reading (Behrman, Nelson, & Sekuler, 1998).This syndrome is due to impairment in phonological ability of an individual rather than to impairment in a person’s reading ability. Another reading disorder is called Surface dyslexia. Surface dyslexia is an impairment in which the reading of exception words is impaired while regular word and non-word reading is preserved (Behrman et al. 1998). Deficiency of semantic memory can be considered as a causal factor in this syndrome.
While orthographic processes of the brain are less likely to be a causal factor in this reading disorder.Patterson, Graham, and Hodges (1994) claim that the concentration of subword phonological elements might suffice for regular words and non-words but that semantic knowledge is needed to retrieve the phonology for irregular items for which spelling-to-sound correspondences are inadequate. In general, this syndrome is an effect of impairment of the cognitive ability, which is the semantic memory in this syndrome, of an individual. Pure alexia is a syndrome in which an individual’s response time in reading a word is low. The time to finish reading a word in a person having pure alexia takes longer compared to an average person’s reading time.It is suggested that pure alexia is the behavioral manifestation of a deficit in speed of visual identification which is not specific to orthographic material (Friedman & Alexander, 1984).
Nevertheless, the result in reading the word is more likely to be accurate. Word length is directly proportional to the response time in reading a word. The longer the word is, the longer time it will take to finish reading the word. Farah and Wallace (1991) stated that the abnormal word length effect in pure alexia originates in the same processing stage as the visual quality effect, that is, in visual perception.
It is also known today as letter-by-letter reading. Alexia is said to ‘pure’ because it is not associated with any other language diosorders (Montant & Behrmann, 2000). However, people having this reading disorder showed impairment in identifying orthographic material. Impairment in visual processing is an added symptom in this reading disorder. There are causal factors which affect reading disorders. Cohen et al.
(2000) identified Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), a region of the brain in the middle part of the left fusiform gyrus (Starrfelt and Gerlach, 2007).This region of the brain is responsible in receptiveness of an individual on visual words. It develops perception of words. Thus, it is essential in the reading ability of an individual. Frequent properties of a writing system help in developing the perception of words in this region of the brain. These properties of a writing system include spatial position, size, and font.
Development of VWFA depends on words and non-words, consonant strings and single letters, and the stimuli they are evaluated to. Relationship between activities in VWFA is indirectly proportional to word frequency.As the frequency of the word becomes low, activity of VWFA becomes high. Pseudowords also increase the activity of VWFA in comparison to real words. In general, VWFA is connected on non-visual processing, which includes semantic processing and phonological retrieval.
The phonemic process of the brain is also crucial in adequate reading. Phoneme comprises the letters of the alphabet. Phonemic process involves identifying and recognizing the sound of the letters or language comprising the word. Disability to recognize the sound of the language and how they were presented in the alphabet causes reading disorder.Scot and Clinton (2002) stated three types of information that is needed to read adequately. This information was graphic information, semantic information and syntactic information.
Graphic information is the visual representation of letters, symbols, words, etc. in the process of reading. Semantic information refers to the understanding, perception, comprehension, meaning of words in the memory of an individual. On the other hand, syntactic information is represented through alphabet character. Recognition of visual word is an important factor in reading.Invariance of words includes its position, size, case, font, and spatial arrangement.
These factors are all related to the reading mechanism of an individual. Learning to read must involve a pre-emption of part of the existing visual system and its conversion, by minimal modification, to process the shapes of letters and words (Dehaene, Cohen, Sigman, & Vinckier, 2005). The function of recognizing visual letter strings takes place in the localized region of the left occipito-temporal sulcus, which is found in the on the side of fusiform gyrus.The semantic and phonological processes of the brain are due to the visual word from system.
It is the one responsible in sending information in the temporal, parietal, and frontal areas regarding the identity of the letter string. Neural code will then be produced by the visual word form system. This neural code is a cell assembly different from each word yet remains to be the same despite the changes position, size, case, font, and spatial arrangement of letters in words. As we all know, pure alexia is the letter-by-letter reading. Bub and Arguin (1995) identified two possible causes on this type of disorder.
The first causal factor that they have stated in their study is due to impairment in peripheral mechanisms that map visual information onto word forms. The second causal factor that they have identified is due to a central disturbance, in this case not related to impairment in perceptual abilities of an individual having pure alexia. The first factor was formulated due to evidences that people having pure alexia have the inability to process various visual word forms or single-letter identities. However, this perspective has its own flaw.
It is just based on perceptual disturbance.This led to the second perspective, relating pure alexia to central disturbance. Bub and Arguin (1995) offer the following interpretation of letter-by-letter reading in their study: A specialized mechanism, termed the visual word-form system, exists in the left posterior cortex, which parses letter strings into familiar orthographic units (ranging in size from graphemes to syllables and whole words) and categorizes them perceptually. This automatic synthesis of letters into higher-order reading units normally allows for rapid and accurate identification of words…. Therefore, people having pure alexia have lost their visual word form system.
Removing recognizable perceptual units from a word or spelling pattern is a disability of an individual having pure alexia. Due to the major damage of the visual word form system, individuals having pure alexia have the perceptual notion that the words are just random strings of letters. Bub and Arguin (1995) come to a general conclusion after the experiment that they have done on individuals having pure alexia. On free vision, individuals with pure alexia is distinguished by long oral reading times, increasing significantly by tenths of a second in every additional letter.Mistakes in reading the word also increases if given limited time to read a word.
The length of the word is a major consideration in their performance. The extreme slowing of responses, apparent even for the shortest words, indicates that – whatever the nature of the process by which the letter-by-letter reader arrives at the final output – he must be relying on a procedure that is hampered by difficulty in establishing the perceptual identity of letter units (Bub and Arguin, 1995).Despite the evidences showing impairment in the cognitive skills of people having reading disorders, there are still some who claims that reading disorders are not primarily caused by impairment in the cognitive skills of an individual. Price and Devlin (2003) have stated that there are no neuropsychological studies that have demonstrated a one-to-one mapping between damage to the left midfusiform region and a specific deficit with processing visual word forms.In their study, they have stated that individuals having pure alexia have extensive left occipital lesions which includes the cuneus, calcarine sulcus, and lingual gyrus, in addition to fusiform gyrus.
Therefore, localizing the deficit in reading the word to a specific location of damaged cortex is quite unattainable. They have also found out in their study that individuals having pure alexia have complexity and difficulty color naming and picture processing. In general, problem in reading is the most significant cause of a general problem in visual processing.Coslett and Saffran (1989) supported this argument through the study that they have done on people having pure alexia. They stated that data found on people having pure alexia are not accommodated by the disconnection account of pure alexia but are more consistent with the hypothesis that reading in these patients is mediated by the right hemisphere. Also, patients having pure alexia that are tested does not showed any impairment in understanding complex pictures, identification in unusual views of pictures of objects, selective attention and visual short term memory (Bub and Arguin, 1995).
Price and Devlin (2003) stated that the major flaw of studies claiming that reading disorders are primarily caused by impairment in cognitive abilities of an individual is that the studies lacks detailed test to analyze and interpret more the visual processes that are related to reading and interpretation of complex pictures. Price and Devlin (2003) argued, in general, that visual word processing is mainly related to the left midfusiform area. For them, it is misleading to name the left midfusiform area as the visual word form area or VWFA.After carefully studying and reading all the literature review and researches, the researcher concluded that it is still convincing to believe that reading disorders are primarily caused by impairment in the cognitive skills of an individual. The factors that are needed in order to read adequately are all attributable to the cognitive skills of an individual.
Graphic information, semantic information, and syntactic information are all needed for a person to read adequately. And all of this information can only be processed if an individual does not have any impairment in his/her cognitive skills.Reading is not limited to just pronouncing or spelling-out the letters of a word. Comprehension and perception of words is also part of reading. Comprehension and perception of words depends on the semantic memory of an individual. And semantic memory is part of the cognitive skills of an individual.
People having surface dyslexia showed to have impairment in their semantic memory affecting their reading ability. On the other hand, people having pure alexia have symptoms on impairment on their visual processing.Again, this is also part of the cognitive skills of an individual. Therefore, cognitive skills play an important role in the reading abilities of an individual.
Impairment in the cognitive skills shows effect in the reading ability of an individual. Also, there are more studies showing evidences that relate impairment in cognitive skills to reading disorders. In the studies done in the past, patients having reading disorders, specifically pure alexia, showed lesions or damage in the left midfusiform area of their brain.The crucial anatomic correlate of alexia was a lesion of the paraventricular white matter of the left occipital lobe, capable of compromising both interhemispheric and intrahemispheric visual pathways (Damasio, A. & Damasio, H. , 1983).
Although Price and Devlin (2003) questioned the tests that has been done on patients having reading disorder for it lacks detailed information to analyze and interpret more the cause of the reading disorder, it is still convincing that individuals having reading disorders have impairment in their cognitive skills.Even if they have shown that patients having pure alexia can perform some cognitive skills including interpreting complex pictures, selective attention, and visual short term memory, it is still not enough to say that reading disorders are not caused by impairment in the cognitive abilities. Cognitive abilities are not limited to the mentioned abilities. Visual processing, a symptom of pure alexia, is also a cognitive ability.
Aside from focusing on the main cause of reading disorder, it is also of great importance to provide solutions and remedy that will help in improving the reading ability of the people having reading disorder. An environment that will stimulate reading and language can be of help. Organized and structured programs in reading can also help in improving, if not, curing reading disorders. Reading ability is important to any individual. Finding the primary cause of reading disorders can help in solving and providing solutions for the impairment.
