Naming-speed deficits and phonological memory deficits in Chinese developmental dyslexia

The naming-speed deficit hypothesis in developmental dyslexia was examined with readers in a nonalphabetic script, Chinese. Twenty Chinese dyslexic children in Hong Kong were compared with 20 average readers of the same age (CA controls) and 20 average readers of the same reading level (RL controls) in naming speed (naming digits, colours, pictures, and Chinese characters) and phonological memory skills (digit repetition, word repetition, and nonword repetition). The results showed that the naming speed of Chinese dyslexic children was significantly slower than that of their CA controls in all the naming tasks, but similar to that of their RL controls. The dyslexic children also performed significantly worse than both CA and RL controls in all the phonological memory tasks. These findings suggest that Chinese dyslexic children have naming-speed deficits and phonological memory deficits like their alphabetic counterparts.