Sammendrag
It has been hypothesized that students with dyslexia struggle with writing
because of a word-level focus that reduces attention to higher level textual
features (structure, theme development). This may result from difficulties
with spelling and/or difficulties with reading. Twenty-six Norwegian upper
secondary students (M = 16.9 years) with weak decoding skills and 26 agematched
controls composed expository texts by keyboard under two conditions:
normally and with letters masked to prevent them reading what
they were writing. Weak decoders made more spelling errors and produced
poorer quality text. Their inter-key-press latencies were substantially longer
preword, at word end, and within word. These findings provide some
support for the word-level focus hypothesis, although we found that
weak decoders were slightly less likely to engage in word-level editing.
Preventing reading did not affect differences between weak decoders and
controls, indicating that their reduced fluency was associated with production
rather than reading difficulties.
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