The phonological deficit hypothesis in Chinese developmental dyslexia

The phonological deficit hypothesis in developmental dyslexia was examined with readers in Chinese, a nonalphabetic script. Fifty-six Chinese children with dyslexia (23 of whom had reading and writing difficulties and 33 had reading problems only) were compared with average readers of the same age (CA controls) and average readers of the same reading-level (RL controls) in phonological awareness and phonological memory skills. The results showed that the Chinese dyslexic children with both reading and writing difficulties performed significantly worse than their CA controls and RL controls in nearly all the phonological tasks, whereas those with reading problems only, performed significantly less well than their CA controls, but similarly with their RL controls. These findings suggest that Chinese children with dyslexia have deficits in processing phonological information like their alphabetic counterparts.