Orthographic, phonologic, and semantic processing in reading disabled and nondisabled subjects

In this study the confusability paradigm of Byrne and Shea and Waterman and Lewandowski was modified to include an orthographic condition made possible by presenting stimuli visually rather than aurally. The confusability tasks included a pseudoword-recognition task with only phonologic and orthographic information available for coding and a word-recognition task with phonologic, semantic, and orthographic information available for coding. 20 poor and 20 good readers (13 to 18 years of age) were asked to report whether stimuli had been presented a second time in two continuous lists (pseudoword and word). In contrast to previous work, phonologic confusability was not observed for either group, whereas orthographic confusability was noted for both groups on both tasks. Semantic confusability occurred for both groups on the word task. On these tasks which triggered orthographic and semantic processing (errors) poor readers performed comparably to good readers, suggesting that on a confusability task presented visually they were not disadvantaged.