Affiliation:
1. The Arab Academic College for Education Department of special education and Learning Disabilities Haifa Israel
2. The Unit for the Study of Arabic Language, Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities University of Haifa Haifa Israel
3. Department of Special Education Shaanan Academic Religious Teachers' College Haifa Israel
4. Department of Special Education Gordon College of Education Haifa Israel
5. Department of Learning Disabilities Western Galilee College Acco Israel
Abstract
Research has shown that children with dyslexia and children with a low socioeconomic status (SES) fall behind in terms of literacy acquisition, but a question remains regarding the cumulative effect of dyslexia and SES on linguistic, cognitive and reading skills. To examine the impact of cognition and environment on literacy development, we returned to the data set of 1,441 elementary school children (223 dyslexic readers and 1,241 typical readers) from low and medium‐high SES backgrounds within Palestinian society in Israel who had participated in the development study of a comprehensive battery of tests in oral and written Arabic. The findings of this retrospective study reveal that, across grade levels, dyslexic readers from a low SES background showed similar performance to those from a medium‐high SES background on most linguistic, cognitive and reading measures. As for typical readers, SES contributed to individual differences in all linguistic, cognitive and reading indices, with the exception of RAN. Finally, a cumulative effect of dyslexia and SES was found in relation to morphology, vocabulary, listening comprehension and text‐reading accuracy.
Subject
Developmental and Educational Psychology,Education,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology,General Medicine