Girls are better, even girls with dyslexia?!

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Girls are better, even girls with
dyslexia?! Gender differences in reading
performance of teenagers with and without
dyslexia Dr. Anita Blonk Dr. Anna
BosmanUniversity of Nijmegen Department of
Special Education A.Blonk_at_ped.kun.nlA.Bosman_at_ped
.kun.nl
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Introduction

• Students with dyslexia are often regarded slow
  learners. Despite intensive reading and spelling
  instruction, and practice, they appear highly
  resistant to intervention activities, as
  indicated by the fact that their reading and/or
  spelling levels generally remain at a
  significantly lower level than that of students
  without dyslexia.

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Protocol Dyslexia Secundary Education (to appear
in 2004)

• The main goal of the protocol is the
  incorporation of special facilities for dyslexic
  children in every-day practice in different types
  of secondary education.
• To be able to help all students with dyslexia, it
  needs to be established who has and who has not
  dyslexia, since that is not yet clear when
  students enter secondary education. The protocol
  also includes a procedure for the classification
  and diagnosis of dyslexia. It includes for
  instance three tests and a sample of a
  questionnaire for the assessment of dyslexia in
  primary school.

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Gender differences

• A different prevalence of dyslexia is often
  cited for boys and girls ratios differ between
  21 and 91 more boys suffering from dyslexia.
• Women perform significantly better than man on
  reading related tests (for instance Marlow et
  al. 2001)

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This study Materials

• Three, newly developed reading-related tests for
  students who have just started secondary school
  (authors Henneman, Kleijnen, Smits)
• silent-reading task three minutes of silent
  reading.
• a spelling task 12 sentences composed of words
  with increasing complexity (het wonderlijke
  weer, the surprising weather).
• Writing task copying a sentence as often as
  possible in two minutes (cf., Hatcher, Snowling,
  Griffith, 2002).

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This studyParticipants
Boys Girls Total
Without dyslexia certificate 1260 1231 2491
With dyslexia certificate 113 52 165
Total 1373 1283 2656
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Results of the reading-related tasks of all
participants reading task
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Results of the reading-related tasks of all
participants spelling task
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Results of the reading-related tasks of all
participants writing task
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Conclusions

• Significant differences between girls and boys
  and between schooltypes for all tree tasks
• Girls performance is better than boys for all
  three tasks writing, spelling and reading
• Except for spelling and reading at VWO type (no
  difference)
• All three reading related tasks differentiate
  between schooltypes
• VWO gtHAVO gtVMBO

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Comparison of participants with and without
dyslexia certificate
Mean Performances With dyslexia certificate Without dyslexia certificate Differences between means p lt .001
Score on Writing 191 (n 132) 220 (n 2096) s
Score on Reading 1075 (n151) 1485 (n2377) s
Score on Spelling 77 (n162) 87 (n2482) s
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Performance of boys and girls with and without
dyslexia certificate
Mean performances Girls without Girls with dyslexia Boys without Boys with dyslexia
Score on writing 224 197 210 183
Score on reading 1526 1089 1418 1044
Score on spelling 89 77 86 78
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Conclusions

• Significant differences between the performance
  of boys and girls without dyslexia certificate
• Same difference in performance for writing the
  difference is 14, but not significant (due to
  smaller group)
• less differences between performance of boys and
  girls for reading (mean difference of 45) and
  spelling (1).

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Mean score comparisons on all three tasks between
low-performing girls without dyslexia and girls
with dyslexia
Performance of girls (N1353) With dyslexia certificate Without dyslexia certificate Differences between means p lt .05
Mean Score on Writing lt197 165 (n211.5) 170 (n18814) n.s.
Mean Score on Reading lt1089 786 (n231.6) 935 (n13910.2) s.
Mean Score on Spelling lt77 50 (n131) 39 (n55 4) n.s.
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Mean score comparisons on all three tasks between
low-performing boys without dyslexia and boys
with dyslexia
Performance of boys (N1360) With dyslexia certificate Without dyslexia certificate Differences between means p lt .05
Mean Score on Writing lt 183 147 (n37 2.7) 157 (n26919.7) s.
Mean Score on Reading lt1044 787 (n51 3.8) 875 (n20915.4) s.
Mean Score on Spelling lt 78 61 (n53 3.9) 52 (n18813.8) n.s.
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Discussion issues

• To interpret these data, three issues arise
• What are the implications for the classification
  of dyslexia? Do we need separate norms for boys
  and girls in secondary education to obtain a
  valid comparison with the standard group?
• Since performance at the beginning of primary
  grade hardly differs between boys and girls, we
  wonder at what age reading-related performance of
  boys and girls starts to diverge?
• Do girls gain more from intervention than boys?