The simple view of reading in light of effects of vocabulary and working memory in Greek-Turkish bilingual children with and without dyslexia

2023 IJRSE – Volume 12 Issue 6

Available Online:  31 May 2023

Author/s:

Dosi, Ifigeneia
Democritus University of Thrace, Greece (idosi@helit.duth.gr)

Abstract:

This study investigates the reading skills of bilingual children with and without dyslexia in light of Simple View of Reading (SVR) and effects of vocabulary and verbal working memory (VWM) in both languages. Under SVR, reading consists of decoding and language comprehension. Many studies have shown that reading comprehension in bilinguals is lower than their monolingual peers. These differences are not due to decoding but due to language comprehension, and, mostly, due to their lower vocabulary size in each language (Melby-Lervåg & Lervåg, 2014). Bilingual children with dyslexia have issues with decoding; their language comprehension is, subsequently, also affected (Joshi, 2018). Earlier studies noted that vocabulary is correlated with reading comprehension in typically developing (TD) bilingual children (Harkio & Pietilä, 2016) and in children with dyslexia (Joshi et al., 2010). The role of VWM in reading comprehension is still unclear in bilinguals. To this end, twenty-four bilingual children with and without dyslexia were tested by means of a large battery in both Greek and Turkish (a fluid intelligence task, two expressive vocabulary tasks, two VWM tasks and two reading tasks). Results have shown that the two groups did not differ in their fluid intelligence or VWM in both languages. However, differences were found in all other tasks. Moreover, decoding skills of children with dyslexia were impaired compared to those of TD bilinguals. Finally, reading comprehension is correlated with vocabulary and VWM in both languages in TD bilinguals; while similar correlations were found only in the dominant language of children with dyslexia.

Keywords: reading skills, vocabulary, verbal working memory, bilingualism, dyslexia

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2023.37

Cite this article:
Dosi, I. (2023). The simple view of reading in light of effects of vocabulary and working memory in Greek-Turkish bilingual children with and without dyslexia. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 12(6), 29-38. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2023.37