Diverse inhibition and working memory of word recognition for dyslexic and typically developing children

The present study focuses on (1) comparing dyslexic and typically developing children's cognitive and behavioural inhibitory abilities; (2) examining the relationship between word recognition, inhibition, and working memory in dyslexic and typically developing children by correlation, regression and path analyses. Participants in the present study were sampled from 3rd and 4th graders in Taiwan. Results indicated that dyslexic and typically developing children did not significantly differ in behavioural inhibition. In contrast, dyslexic children showed significantly lower levels of cognitive inhibition compared to typically developing children. Dyslexic children also showed that only cognitive inhibition significantly contributed to their word recognition, and typically developing children showed similar phenomenon. Finally, models of dyslexic and typically developing children's working memory, inhibition and word recognition were similar in that working memory and cognitive inhibition significantly contributed to word recognition for both dyslexic and typically developing children. Moreover, the contribution of the combination of working memory and inhibition was greater than the contribution of only inhibition; both of typically developing and dyslexic children's working memory showed more contributions than inhibition. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.