Division of labor between phonology and semantics during reading and spelling in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

It has been widely accepted that developmental dyslexia (DD) exhibits deficits in reading and spelling. However, the role of phonology and semantics in reading and spelling in dyslexia has not been systematically investigated. In Experiment 1, 45 Chinese children with DD and 43 age-matched controls read two tests with Chinese characters. One test controlled character’s familiarity and regularity, and the other test controlled character’s phonological consistency and semantic transparency. In Experiment 2, 43 Chinese children with DD and 41 controls spelled a sublist of characters in the two tests in Experiment 1. Our results support two main facts. Firstly, typically developing Chinese children can utilize more lexical or semantic information in reading characters when phonetic regularity or consistency in characters are absent, but Chinese children with DD cannot, indicating an impairment in the division of labor between phonology and semantics in reading in Chinese DD. Secondly, the division of labor between phonology and semantics in spelling have different patterns in Chinese DD compared with controls. Controls utilize semantics as a compensation for the absence of phonetic regularity or consistency when spelling characters, while children with DD do not, indicating an impairment in the division of labor between phonology and semantics in spelling in Chinese DD. The research supports the triangle model and provides empirical evidence for the division of labor between phonology and semantics in reading and spelling in Chinese children with and without reading disabilities.