Di Blasi Francesco Domenico, Vizzi Francesca, Stimoli Maria Agatina, Buono Serafino, Iaia Marika, Zoccolotti Pierluigi, Angelelli Paola
Unit of Psychology, Oasi Research Institute-IRCCS, Troina, Italy.
Department of Human and Social Sciences, Lab of Applied Psychology and Intervention, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 17;13:1065525. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1065525. eCollection 2022.
In individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID), efficient reading and writing skills promote social integration, self-autonomy, and independence. However, research has mainly focused on reading skills, while evidence on spelling skills is scarce and mostly on English-speaking subjects. In the present research project, we compared the spelling skills of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) learning in Italian, a regular orthography, to those of typically developing children matched for school level.
In the first study, the performance on a Passage Dictation Test of forty-four children with ID attending regular classrooms from 4th to 8th grades (mean age = 12.16 years; SD = 1.57) were compared with controls matched for sex and grade. In the second study, a Words and Nonwords Dictation Test was administered (with stimuli varying for lexicality, orthographic complexity, regularity of transcription, and the presence of different types of phonetic-phonological difficulties) to twenty-two children with ID attending regular classrooms from 4th to 8th grades (mean age = 12.2 years; SD = 1.37) and 22 controls matched for sex and grade. In both studies, an error analysis was performed to characterize types of misspellings. Separate ANOVAs were performed on z scores.
Children with ID generally had a lower performance than controls. In the Passage Dictation Test, they showed a higher number of phonological (and phonetic-phonological) errors than phonologically plausible ones, indicating, as a group, predominant phonological difficulties as compared to lexical-orthographic ones. In the Words and Nonwords Dictation Test, they performed poorly on regular stimuli presenting specific types of phonetic-to-phonological difficulties (geminates, non-continuant consonants) and committed more minimal distance, context-sensitive and simple conversion misspellings. However, deficits in the orthographic-lexical procedure, as indicated by a low performance in words with unpredictable spelling, were present in a high percentage of children.
It is concluded that children with ID have significant spelling difficulties not confined to the orthographic process but also in phoneme-to-grapheme mapping that, in a regular orthography like Italian, should be acquired early and easily.
在智障人士中，高效的读写技能有助于促进社会融合、自我自主和独立。然而，研究主要集中在阅读技能上，而关于拼写技能的证据很少，且大多针对说英语的受试者。在本研究项目中，我们将在意大利学习的智障儿童（ID）的拼写技能与在学校水平上匹配的正常发育儿童的拼写技能进行了比较，意大利语采用常规正字法。
在第一项研究中，将44名4至8年级在普通班级就读的智障儿童（平均年龄 = 12.16岁；标准差 = 1.57）在段落听写测试中的表现与性别和年级匹配的对照组进行比较。在第二项研究中，对22名4至8年级在普通班级就读的智障儿童（平均年龄 = 12.2岁；标准差 = 1.37）和22名性别和年级匹配的对照组进行了单词和非单词听写测试（刺激材料在词汇性、正字法复杂性、转录规律性以及不同类型的语音 - 音系困难的存在方面有所不同）。在两项研究中，都进行了错误分析以确定拼写错误的类型。对z分数进行了单独的方差分析。
智障儿童的表现通常低于对照组。在段落听写测试中，他们表现出的语音（和语音 - 音系）错误比语音上合理的错误更多，这表明作为一个群体，与词汇 - 正字法困难相比，他们主要存在语音困难。在单词和非单词听写测试中，他们在呈现特定类型语音到音系困难（双辅音、非延续性辅音）的常规刺激材料上表现不佳，并且犯了更多最小距离、上下文敏感和简单转换的拼写错误。然而，在拼写不可预测的单词时表现不佳所表明的正字法 - 词汇程序缺陷，在很大比例的儿童中存在。
得出结论认为，智障儿童存在严重的拼写困难，不仅限于正字法过程，而且在音素到字素的映射方面也存在困难，在像意大利语这样的常规正字法中，这种映射应该很早就容易掌握。
