Children with Chinese dyslexia acquiring English literacy: Interaction between cognitive subtypes of dyslexia and orthographies

The present study investigated the impact of Chinese dyslexia subtypes on English literacy skills in Hong Kong children. Eighty-four Cantonese-speaking children officially diagnosed with dyslexia (mean age = 103 months) and 48 age-matched control children were tested. Cluster analysis with performances on Chinese syllable awareness (CSA), Chinese phonemic awareness (CPA), Chinese phonological memory (CPM), Chinese orthographic awareness (COA), and matrice reasoning (MR) yielded three cognitive subtypes. Phonological deficit (PD) subtype (43%) had normal performance in all measures except CPA. Orthographic deficit (OD) group (24%) had impaired COA, but was unimpaired on the other measures. Global deficit (GD) subtype (33%) had deficits in all measures except CPM. To answer the question which dyslexic subtype is more liable to difficulties learning English, we compared the three subtypes with control children on their English skills. PD performed significantly worse in PA (p < 0.01), reading fluency (p < 0.01), and dictation (p < 0.01); OD did not show significant differences on any English skills except OA (p < 0.01); GD performed significantly worse on all English skills (all p < 0.05) except English PM. A two-way ANOVA (subtypes × language) was performed on word reading fluency and dictation each. Results show that both interaction effects were significant (both p < 0.05), indicating that dyslexic subtypes manifested differently between Chinese and English. In Chinese, the three subtypes did not show significant difference in reading or writing; in English, OD performed the best and GD the worst among the three subtypes. The findings suggest that different subtypes of a Chinese dyslexia bear different risks for difficulties in English literacy. Copyright © 2020 ARWA.