Reading disability, linguistic access and short-term memory: Comments prompted by Jorm's review of developmental dyslexia

Abstract

Jorm (1979a) summarized data demonstrating short-term memory(STM) impairment in reading-disabled children, and argued for STM deficit as the cause of developmental dyslexia. In this review it is suggested that evidence for impoverished conceptualization of surface features of language (weak “linguistic access”) among poor readers needs to be accounted for in any overall theory for dyslexia. The possibility that STM deficit is responsible for poor performance in measures of linguistic access is considered and found not to account for all of the data, for example, the finding that training in manipulation of phonemic structure can speed reading acquisition. It is argued that failure on the part of some children to recruit linguistic processes for purposes outside their adaptive specialization may account for both STM impairment and reading difficulties. The need for theory and experiment-based advances in clarifying the concept of linguistic access is noted.