Language talent in the face of dyslexia A case study Mila Vulchanova & team, Language Acquisition & Language Processing Lab, NTNU

‘Dyslexic learners have many talents that just don’t happen to include reading and writing.’ Professor John Stein, Professor of Neurophysiology University of Oxford, UK

Outline The case – on-going research Issues: language talent and language deficit against usual dissociations and comorbidity among language and reading disorders Implications for instruction in second language(s)

The case: history EP, 9 years old, female L1: Bulgarian Lives in a relatively small village; lives with father and grandmother (parents divorced) Has acquired German from watching (children’s programmes on) a German TV channel!? According to teachers has very good memory: can memorise poems read in class on a single hearing

Profile Talent: language learning Deficit: dyslexia An unusual combination (Dimitrova-Vulcahnova et al., in preparation) The most commonly attested cases of talent witness a double dissociation between language and non-linguistic cognition (Smith & Tsimpli 1995) The comorbidity among language, speech and reading disorders (Goulandris et al. 2000, Pennington & Bishop 2009)

German: L1 or L2 Preliminary testing (in Bulgaria): very advanced German, has enrolled in a school with intensive German instruction due to this Results from comprehensive testing in Trondheim by a German linguist: extremely advanced level of German, close to L1 (comparison to peers acquiring German as L1)

Dyslexia profile Many of the behavioural symptoms suggested by Ronald Davis (1992): General Vision, reading & spelling Hearing and speech Writing and motor skills Math and time management Memory and cognition Behaviour, health, development and personality

Symptoms General Talented: in art, drama, music, story-telling, special interest in certain technical inventions (e.g., visit to Science Centre, Trondheim) Gets lost easily or loses track of time Difficulty sustaining attention Learns through hands-on experience, demonstrations, observation, visual aids

Symptoms Vision, reading and spelling Complains of dizziness, headaches while reading Reading and writing shows omissions, reversals in letters Seems to have difficulty with vision, yet eye exams do not reveal a problem Extremely keen sighted and observant (relatively) Poor comprehension Spells phonetically and inconsistently

Symptoms Hearing and speech Extended hearing, hears things not apparent to others, easily distracted by sounds

Symptoms Writing and motor skills Trouble with writing, handwriting varies, illegible Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor at ball games Often confuses left/right

Symptoms Math and time management Difficulty telling time (cannot read the clock), managing time (no sense of time) Math tasks: knows answers but cannot do it on paper Can do arithmetic, but fails on word problems However, telling time may have a different underlying mechanism, e.g., transferring visual information (spatial) to digital/numerical!!!

Symptoms Memory and cognition Excellent long term memory for experiences

Symptoms Behaviour, health, development, personality Extremely disorderly Late in crawling, walking, problems tying shoe-laces Sensitive to foods Light-sleeper, wetting Mistakes and symptoms increase dramatically with confusion, emotional stress

Dyspraxia? Slow at dressing, unable to tie shoe-laces Barely legible hand-writing Literal use (and understanding) of language High levels of motor activity Inability to form relationships with other children Sleeping problems Physical symptoms, such as headaches

Testing KBIT-2 test Reveals the profile typical of dyslexia (cf. Milne 2003): verbal intelligence higher than non-verbal cognition (verbal score significantly higher than non-verbal score (< .01), but composite score overall very high. Verbal score 137 (upper extreme), non-verbal - 111 (average), composite IQ score 128 (above average, close to upper extreme) A dissociation between cognitive skills (verbal/non-verbal combined) with spelling, reading and writing (however, cf. Pennington & Bishop 2009)

Working memory Language vs. sound recall: ceiling performance Read vs. hear (words) recall tasks: ceiling performance Read vs. hear (words) recall combined with production (increased difficulty) Read & write down words: recalled 6 Hear & repeat words: on first trial: only one word/ second trial: 6 / third trial: 9 Rubinstein’s (1970) memory task (hear & repeat words): significantly better than average for peers (2nd & 3rd trial 9 words out of 10) Excellent visual memory (for pictures of objects), but also words Memory results contradict the general dyslexic profile (e.g., poor working memory)

Dissociation A general conclusion on the basis of (L1/L2) language talent and dyslexia: an asymmetry/dissociation between oral (a strength) and written (a weakness) modality Possible explanation in terms of the “phonological loop” of working memory as the best candidate for “the language acquisition device” (Gathercole 1999, Perani 2005)

The two languages As expected, problems and success! persist in both languages Poor spelling, (relatively) poor reading comprehension in both Bulgarian and German Good at auditory language A somewhat special register profile: speaks a literary variety of the L1 (in contrast to her background) A special expressive language profile: uses stereotyped and highly idiomatic language not typical of her age (but no metaphors!) Mechanism: Tomasello (2002) holoprhases are typical of the initial/early stages of LA (before generalizations based on analogy)

Grammar Mistakes at the level of advanced grammar Bulgarian: clitic doubling, verb argument structure (subject/direct object), Information Structure phenomena Potential explanation in line with deficit and LA: clitics are “small” (function) words and are usually omitted in early stages of acquisition (lack phonological weight and go “unnoticed”) the very same items are omitted in EP’s texts written under dictation, errors even in copying clitics German: cases (e.g., similar to clitics in Bg)

Some puzzles Literal interpretation of language Proverbs and sayings, metaphors Verbal prefixes originally derived from spatial prepositions (poor spatial cognition, e.g., orientation problems) Translates literally from German

More puzzles Learned German from exposure to TV: impossible according to current research (Zimmerman et al. 2007, also p.c.) Possible explanation (in line with factors in LA): Massive exposure: never tires of watching her favourite programmes Exploits relative strengths of the dyslexic profile: good hearing, attention to detail, learning from demonstration, hands-on Good auditory skills Good working memory Biological factors: brain plasticity (started acquiring German at age 4)

Implications for L2 learning Good news: L2 learning still possible for some dyslexic individuals Provided The strengths of the dyslexic profile are used: good hearing, the relative oral (auditory) language strength, hands-on learning profile However Reading/writing still suffer: especially when orthographies differ (e.g., Norwegian (relatively transparent)  English (non-transparent)

Popular intervention techniques in L2 Sensori-motor approach: involving many modalities/senses in a single session – auditory (hearing/listening while reading), haptic (touch), playing games (scrabble, word games – flash cards), learning from own experience This kind of inclusive approach is beneficial to all students and does not require additional effort on part of the teacher! Improve reading/writing in the L1 first! One language at a time (cf. the challenges for bilingual individuals)