תקציר תזה :קצב עיבוד מידע בתהליכי קריאה כגורם איכות בין ילדים דיסלקטים וילדים היפראקטיביים אימפולסיב

                                                                                    ABSTRACT

    Speed of processing in reading is often viewed as a factor of efficiency

    in reading.This research will examine the function and contribution of

    speed of processing of the reading efficiency in a group of dislectic

    readers compared to a group of Impulsive-Hyperactive readers.

    The theoretical basis of this work is the " Processing Distribute

    Parallel Model" (Seidenberg & McCleland,1989). The PDP model describes

    the processing of reading as an integration between three processors:the

    phonological processor,the semantic processor and the visual-

    orthographic processor.The quality of reading depends on the quality and

    speed of processing in every processor and the integration between all

    the processors.

    The basic assumption of the research that is being tested in this work

    is that dyslectic readers' speed of processing will be found slow and

    the impulsive-hyperactive readers speed of processing will be found

    fast. No matter how the speed of processing will be, both groups will be

    less accurate in processing of decoding, reading comprehension and

    cognitive processes.

    In the present study 80 children participated, who were divided into 2

    test groups- 20 children in each group. One test group was of dyslectic

    readers and the other was of impulsive-hyperactive readers.The two other

    control groups, 20 children in each, were of good readers. Both

    dyslectic and impulsive-hyperactive groups were fitted  to other 2

    control groups -one is similar to  the chronological age point of view

    and the other group is similar to the reading age point of view. These

    groups will be called so on compared age group and compared reading

    age.The number of the girls was equal to the number of the boys in each

    group so that the results are referred to as "the subjects". The

    children in the four groups, participating in the research, were

    compared to their backround parameters as intelligence,reading

    parameters and parameters that are relevant to the reading

    process:sustained attention and capacity of attention,visuo-motor

    capacity,phonological and orthographic abilities and speed of processing

    as naming speed ability,phonological, orthographic and the precise

    timing of the speed of processing. After examining the basic processing

    procedures- A special procedure was deviced in order to determine the

    reading speed of processing of all the subjects participating in the

    research. In the special procedure three conditions of reading were

    tested:Self reading paced reading,fast paced condition and slow- pace

    condition. The fast-and the slow-paced reading conditions were

    calculated for each subject separately according to the reading time of

    his or her first self-paced condition. The influence of the changed

    reading -pace was tested according the assumptions, that is, the

    changing of the reading- pace will influence in a different way on the

    reading process of the dyslectic subjects and impulsive- hyperactive

    subjects.The fast-pace will improve the accuracy of reading in the

    dyslectic subjects and the slow-pace will improve the accuracy of the

    impulsive-hyperactive subjects as a response to relevant factors in the

    reading process. The analysing of the results of the research show that

    the first assumption was supported : The dyslectic subjects were found

    slow and less accurate in their reading and cognitive processing

    compared to the control groups in most of the processing procedures. The

    second assumption was partly supported- The impulsive- hyperactive

    subjects were found slow and less accurate in their processing speed in

    reading and cognitive processes compared to the control groups in most

    of the processing procedures. The results show that the third assumption

    was also supported. It was found that there was a difference in the

    speed of processing between the dyslectic and the impulsive -hyperactive

    subjects: The dyslectic subjects were found faster and more accurate in

    most of reading and cognitive processes compared to the impulsive-

    hyperactive subjects. The main important results were that the dyslectic

    subjects speed of processing in naming and phonological processes was

    slow compared to all the subjects in the research . The impulsive

    hyperactive subjects' speed of processing was found slow and they were

    less accurate in most of the cognitive and reading processes compared to

    the control groups and the dyslectic group.The comparison between the

    two test groups shows that there is a distinctive difference between the

    two test groups. The dyslectic subjects had a specific disability in

    decoding ability(i.e phonological) ,word vocabulary and naming

    processes, and the impulsive- hyperactive had general disabilities both

    in reading and cognitive processes. The results of this research sustain

    Stanovitch's(1988) claim that the dyslectics' disabilities are specific

    to the phonological core. The results of the reading and cognitive

    processing sustain Fodor's(1984) claim that impulsive-hyperactive

    subjects have general cognitive disabilities. This research also reveals

    the orthographic advantage in the dyslectic subjects.This advantage is

    important because they have phonological disabilities and were different

    from their age control in word vocabulary .Word vocabulary is known in

    literature as a pre-requisite for reading and predicts the ability of

    reading (Vernon,1970).0n the other hand, Siegel(1984)claims that because

    of the fact that the dislecctic readers have difficulties to read, their

    word vocabulary will be poor.Even though the results of the word

    vocabulary were poor I didn't find evidence of a statistical corelation

    between reading parameters and word vocabulary. The results show that

    Siegel's claim was proved in this research. The assumption that

    accelerating the reading pace of the dyslectic subjects will improve the

    accurate comprehension  which was sustained. The assumption that slowing

    down the reading pace of the impulsive -hyperactive subjects will

    improve  the accurate comprehension was not sustained. The results of

    the research reveal that accelerating the pace of reading improves

    accurate reading comprehension in all the subjects that participated in

    the research. Furthermore, the beneficient subsjects in the accelerating

    pace of reading were the impulsive -hyperactive subjects.They have been

    found more accurate in comprehension than the other groups that had

    participated in the research. These results replicate and support

    Breznitz's (1987a,1987b, 1988,1990,1991,1993) investigations, that is,

    the quality of reading improves when the reading pace is accelerated in

    normal readers and disabled readers. The reason that the impulsive

    -hyperactive subjects improved their comprehension statistically proved

    in post-hoc tests,was that in the usual pace reading rate the

    attentional system  disturbes the processing system.In the fast-pace

    reading there is a balance between the attentional system and the PDP

    processing system (Moser,1988). The balance between the two systems

    makes the processing possible of bigger chunks and creating places to

    the capacity of attention to use the central word processor to process

    comprehension (McCleland,1985,1986).Neurobiological connections arise

    the system by increasing and decreasing the processors in a manner of

    using the available processors. The fast- pace reading is found to be an

    improving factor of the attentional system: capacity ,working memory,

    distractibility and the cognitive resources it can use.The fast-pace

    procedure helped the dyslectic and impulsive-hyperactive readers to

    overcome limitations in reading, such as decoding skills (Snowling

    ,1980:Gough and Tunmer,1985), verbal working memory and the ability to

    concentrate and to avoid distractibility(Siegel,1988). The promising

    results obtained in this research can explain cognitive and reading

    processes in both readers' groups :Dyslectic and impulsive

    -hyperactive.The main difference between the groups was shown in

    decoding skills,naming speed and attention measures, especially in

    attention capacity(working memory).In the fast-pace reading the

    beneficial effect of the reading speed acceleration,was shown in the

    impulsive-hyperactive group ,this suggests that the tendency for

    subjects who have lower cognitive abilities(i.e. attention capacity

    span, sustained attention, low verbal ability,low visuo-motor ability

    and slow speed of processing )to benefit more from the experimental

    manipulation. This research approves the usefulness of accelarating the

    reading rate on comprehension of dyslectic and especially the

    comprehension of the impulsive -hyperactive.