Niolaki, G. 1, 3 , Terzopoulos, A. . 2 , Duncan, L. . 2 & Masterson, J. . 3
1 Coventry University
2 University of Dundee
3 UCL, Institute of Education
We present the case study of FA, a monolingual Greek-speaking girl with the characteristics of surface dyslexia, accurate but slow real word and nonword reading and poor irregular word spelling. Assessment with literacy related tasks revealed a selective deficit of multi-character processing. FA was 9-years-old when first assessed; she then took part in a spelling intervention and, although her spelling improved, at the end of the intervention her reading remained slow and effortful. We decided to offer FA a similar intervention to the one we had employed with RF (published in Cognitive Neuropsychology in 2013) who, like FA, also had slow reading speed and a selective deficit in multicharacter processing prior to intervention. The programme involved repeated practice in reporting letter strings that increased in length over the course of the training. At the end of the FA?s intervention we found a robust improvement in letter report ability as well as an improvement in word reading times. Findings confirm previous reports of impairment of multi-character processing in children with the characteristics of surface dyslexia. They also, indicate that this can be found in readers of transparent orthographies and that targeted theoretically driven interventions can be effective.