Hypothesis-Testing in Dyslexics

Abstract

Hypothesis-testing is an aspect of higher cognitive functioning which involves the formulation of plans to guide behaviours, the assessment of their effectiveness and the ability to make modifications in our strategies on the basis of the evaluation — all integral parts of the reading process. This study investigated the hypothesis testing abilities of a group (n = 9) of dyslexic children aged 8.10—9.6 and of two matched groups of controls, one of the same reading age (n=9) and one of the same mental age (n = 9). The results showed that the performance of the dyslexics on the hypothesis-testing task was appropriate for their mental age, but that, unlike the nondyslexics of the same reading age, there was no relationship between their hypothesis-testing ability and their reading comprehension scores. For both younger and older normal readers, performance on problems with nonexplicit feedback was more closely related to reading ability than was performance on problems with explicit feedback, and this suggested that the dyslexics had been deficient in nonlinguistic cognitive skills when beginning reading.