Cognitive Profiles of Italian Children with Developmental Dyslexia

The aim of this study was to investigate verbal and nonverbal cognitive deficits in Italian students with developmental dyslexia. The performances of 32 dyslexic students, 64 age- matched typically reading controls, and 64 reading age–matched controls were compared on tests of lexical knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal short- term memory, visual search, verbal–visual recall, and visuospatial attention. Considering the phonological domain, dyslexic students were significantly impaired in all the tasks. A significant deficit was also observed in visuospatial attention and verbal–visual recall tasks. Additionally, the pattern of cognitive deficits exhibited by the students with dyslexia was analyzed. Results showed that the largest group of students with dyslexia (40.6%) exhibited multiple deficits, including both the phonological and the nonverbal domains. These findings are in accordance with the hypothesis that developmental dyslexia is a multifactorial deficit; theoretical and practical issues are discussed.