This article is within the scope of WikiProject Dyslexia, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.DyslexiaWikipedia:WikiProject DyslexiaTemplate:WikiProject DyslexiaDyslexia articles
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Quite apart from being confusing, most of this article is a copyvio from this page - the "our results" was a give-away! If nothing else, we need a few words to explain the difference between "deep" and "shallow" orthographies. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 23:41, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can only do one thing at a time.
I have more information to add to this new article.
The current content is as it was on the Dyalexia, article which was as as the previous aditior left it.
Yes it needs improving but so does the res ot the article, so the first task is to take the existing information to the new articles, summerice the main dyalexia article and then improve the new individual articles. This does not happen ovcernigh as you seem to think. Dyalexia is a vewry complex issue, requireing a great deal of time and effort. So if you want to help me with the WIKI technical stuff It will let me concetrate on the Dyslexia texchnical stuff.
I know about dyalexia , you know about wiki so lets work together, and stop winding each other up folowing you around WIKI is nor much fun. — dolfrog (talk) 00:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have added a lead It comes from the main orthograph WIKI article I hope that is OK
it explains waht orthogapy which is a good start. and i have added some more wiki links to the Orthography article.
I will sort out shallow orthography when i can locate a Research paper which provides a really good definition, but what it really mean is that in some langauges the verbal or sound langauge closely relates to the written langauge like Italian, Spanish or Welsh, but in a deep orthography the sounds have more complex written representations as in English
The new lead includes a description and defintion of both deep and shallow orthography.
so I will remove the both od the templates
If there is a nned for further clarification please let me know
The dyslexia article specifically speak about dyslexia being a reading disorder. The article on orthographies and dyslexia contradict itself, stating at first that french has a deep orthography, but then the next paragraph French is grouped with languages that are better for dyslexics. I have been told that my views are worthless, even though I have a degree n linguistics and French. I am a teacher with 25 y. of experience.To make corrections on article are so contrived that it puts me off. If the people who wrote the article were experts they would know that English is in a league of its own. The only reading difficulty in French is the memorization of the extra different spellings that express one phoneme. These are --and this is crucial-- reliable, regular, dependable. English vowel spellings are NOT. Here is some info for you. And Quora is going to replace Wikipedia very soon, if it carries on alienating experts with contrived editing protocols.
We must use Pierrejcd (talk) 11:26, 29 May 2017 (UTC) to sign off. Are you serious?[reply]
I agree that the title of the article doesn't quite capture the what I gather the article is intended to cover: how dyslexia manifests differently in different languages that use the same alphabet, as well as in languages that use a completely different type of writing system.
Title was a problem, and the current title is a short term compromise.
The the orthographies are the structures of the languages we are born into, and dyslexia is about not having the neurological skills to process a specific orthography, when it could be possible for an individual not to be dyslexic when using a different orthography. As is the case of the bilingual boy who could speak both English and Japanese, but was only dyslexic in English. So it more about how dyslexia affects your ability to process different orthographies in different writing systems.
A further question is did the different writing systems evolve because the different tribes had originally split on common neurological grounds so that each writing system reflects the neurological skill preferences of the each sub group. dolfrog (talk) 12:39, 10 July 2009
Can you tell me any more about tribes splitting on common neu4rological grounds? What specifically are you referring to? I'm familiar with how some kinds of writing systems can intensify symptoms, and how a person might be dyslexic in one writing system but not in another very different type. But I've never heard anything about tribes splitting being directly related to writing systems. Can you give me the name of a researcher I can look up?
The bit about the tribe that original came out of Africa some 150-200 individuals who moved out across the what we know call the Gulf States and Isreal, I think that is the Goegraphy, eventually split up in to various sub groups to populate the rest of the world, so what defined how they split up, and why did these different groups develop different writing systems. All very theoretical at the moment but the archiologists and genetisists are still unraveling these issues.
When the the individuals went their seperate ways there would have probably been a some neurological common differences or ways of thinking that causes these splits and why some went one way and others went another. Strange that most of the world population is descended from just 150 - 200 people trying to survive the environmental drought that created the Sahara desert.
This more about human history than about dyslexia.
So ignore the origins of writing systems for now, but the more recent research papers have been taking mentioning the different skills required for reading in different wring system, and therefore different deficits can create the dyslexic problems. That is where we are now lol. My problem is that I can make the connections to resolve problems before others can provide the step by step research to verify it, all part of the problems of being a Visual-Spatial Learner.
best wishes Graeme dolfrog (talk) 16:35, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi RH this was an the first attempt to add some descriptive information as to what logographic orthographies are, the next step is to explain the different skills required to use this type of orthography, and then explain about those who are dyslexic when using this type of orthography due not being able to develop the relevant skills due to various neurological deficits which cause the dyslexic symptoms, which vary according the the skill requirements of each writing system.
So like before please give us time to develop this recently added content into a dyslexia context.
an update on the Dyslexia project as a whole, others have now joined so I am no longer working on my own. there is now a lively and healthy discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dyslexia , the main Dyslexia article is for now not the main focus of attention, more the various sub articles, and Sami AKA Rosmoran has chosen this sub article to improve first, and as you can see the content has varied quite a bit in the last 48 hours, still more content ot be added I need to find the various research papers that related to this topic. I need to tidy up my hard drives and put all the dyslexia related research papers in a bibliographic order, I have recently acquired a program that enable to me to do this biblioexpress, so I have a great deal of re-organisation to do as well as contributing to WIKI etc. dolfrog (talk) 10:38, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Gordon I am reliably informed that we can ask to help from other WIKI editors who are very able to re-write the content you mention. So that the information is not lost and remains within the copyright rules. Unfortunately I do hot have those types of editing skills. So may be you could find out more about how we can contact these specialist WIKI editors so that we can provide the research paper input and they can reprocess the wording but not changing the meaning of the content to avoid copy write issues, and build a good editing team for the WIKI Dyslexia project dolfrog (talk) 12:06, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Using both [[PET]] and [[fMRI]], Paulescu et al. 2001, show that dyslexia in alphabet writing systems has a universal basis in the brain and can be characterized by the same [[neurocognitive deficit]]. Clearly, the manifestation in reading behavior is less severe in a shallow orthography. However, our results show that if more sensitive tests were available, the neurocognitive deficit would be detected. Although Italians with dyslexia read more accurately than French or English people with dyslexia, they showed the same degree of impairment on reading latencies and reading-related phonological tasks relative to their controls. They conclude that a phonological processing deficit is a universal problem in dyslexia and causes literacy problems in both shallow and deep orthographies. However, in languages with shallow orthography, such as Italian, the impact is less, and dyslexia has a more hidden existence. By contrast, deep orthographies like that of English and French may aggravate the literacy impairments of otherwise mild cases of dyslexia.<ref name='Paulesu'>
{{cite journal|title=Dyslexia: Cultural Diversity and Biological Unity
|journal=Science
|date=2001-03-16
|first=E
|last=Paulesu
|coauthors= J.-F. Démonet, F. Fazio, E. McCrory, V. Chanoine, N. Brunswick, S. F. Cappa, G. Cossu, M. Habib, C. D. Frith, U. Frith
|volume=291
|issue=551
|pages=2165-2167
|doi= 10.1126/science.1057179
|url=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5511/2165
|accessdate=2009-05-23 }}</ref>
A study comparing children's reading acquisition rates between different orthography of European Language (alphabet writing systems), Seymour et al. 2003, found that children from a majority of European countries become accurate and fluent in foundation level reading before the end of the first school year. There are some exceptions, notably in French, Portuguese, Danish, and, particularly, in English. The effects appear not to be attributable to differences in age of starting or letter knowledge. It is argued that fundamental linguistic differences in syllabic complexity and orthographic depth are responsible. Syllabic complexity selectively affects decoding, whereas orthographic depth affects both word reading and non-word reading. The rate of development in English is more than twice as slow as in the shallow orthographies. It is hypothesized that the deeper orthographies induce the implementation of a dual (logographic + alphabetic) foundation which takes more than twice as long to establish as the single foundation required for the learning of a shallow orthography. <ref name='Seymour'>
{{cite journal
|title=Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies.
|journal=British Journal of Psychology
|date=2003-05
|first=P H
|last=Seymour
|coauthors=Aro M, Erskine JM.
|volume=94
|issue=Pt2
|pages=143-74
|pmid=12803812
|accessdate=2009-05-28 }}</ref><ref>Johannes C. Ziegler, Conrad Perry, Anna Ma-Wyatt, Diana Ladner, and Gerd Schulte-Körne, [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-0965(03)00139-5 Developmental dyslexia in different languages: Language-specific or universal?] ''Journal of Experimental Child Psychology'') 169 – 193</ref>
Hi Gordon could you find the skilled editors who can re-write the above so that the meaning of the content is not lost, but is not in break of copyright. You do a good job of spotting copyright issues now we need your help to resolve the problem, so that the concept content can be included in the article dolfrog (talk) 12:15, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, it looks like someone went through and rewrote the copyvio Alphabetic section. I rewrote the Logographic section (since it was all just copied from Logogram anyway) with some actual content with a couple of sources. Anyway, the Syllabic section still needs to be rewritten (since, surprise! it's just copied from Syllabary) with some actual original content. I'll try to get around to it if I have some free time, but I can't promise anything. :) There's some good research papers out there, but sadly this article is still a mess. Indeterminate (talk) 08:02, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
. ^ a b Paulesu, E; J.-F. Démonet, F. Fazio, E. McCrory, V. Chanoine, N. Brunswick, S. F. Cappa, G. Cossu, M. Habib, C. D. Frith, U. Frith (2001-03-16). "Dyslexia: Cultural Diversity and Biological Unity". Science 291 (551): 2165-2167. doi:10.1126/science.1057179. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5511/2165. Retrieved on 2009-05-23.
. ^ a b Seymour, P H; Aro M, Erskine JM. (2003-05). "Foundation literacy acquisition in European orthographies.". British Journal of Psychology 94 (Pt2): 143-74. PMID12803812. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12803812. Retrieved on 2009-05-28.
. ^ Johannes C. Ziegler, Conrad Perry, Anna Ma-Wyatt, Diana Ladner, and Gerd Schulte-Körne, Developmental dyslexia in different languages: Language-specific or universal? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology) 169 – 193
To provide basic information about what orthographies and to help define the different writing systems, I have initially a copied a sample text from the WIKI article that define and describe writing system and orthographies in great detail. We need to describe and define the skills required to read these different orthographies before we can explain why dyslexics will have a skill disability or a neurological reason for mot being able to acquire these skills, why some may be dyslexic with regard to one type of orthography and not dyslexic in another type of orthography So may be the source WIKI article require to provide more references in their area of specialisation to help others like us who need to use that information.
Surely we should not have to have to do all the research for everyone else on WIKI. dolfrog (talk) 12:33, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Orthography articles/Orthographies and Dyslexia article
I'm running into some terminology differences in the orthography-related linguistics articles and would like some feedback. Actually, I think the real problem is that there are content problems in the orthography article and the articles it refers to.
In the dyslexia field, researchers seem to use the terms "shallow orthography" and "deep orthography" to distinguish between the relative complexity of writing systems. There can be shallow alphabetic orthographies and shallow logographic orthograpies, etc etc. The Orthography article in the linguistics area only includes information about alphabetic orthographies, although it does imply that other types of orthographies exist, in that it mentions Chinese and Japanese.
Also, the Orthography article uses the term "defective orthography" instead of "deep orthography," but the link for the term Defective orthography goes to the article Defective script, which in turn distinguishes between a defective script and an irregular script, and then defines English as an irregular script.
In the dyslexia canon, English is a "deep orthography."
Clearly there is a terminology gap. I don't think it would be appropriate to use terminology in Wikipedia dyslexia articles that is different from the commonly used terminology in the dyslexia field. At the same time, I don't want to go try to "fix" a bunch of linguistics articles. Especially since I ain't no linguist!
Rather than try to go sort out an entire subgroup of linguistics articles, I'm inclined to make a suggestion on the appropriate linguistics talk pages to address this. In order to provide the most critical underlying information for the dyslexia topic, I'm further inclined to provide a brief section for definition of terms, and then to very briefly define the term orthography and its related terms deep- and shallow- orthography. I think I can define each term in 1 to 2 sentences.
This is a kludge, granted, but I don't have time to go off on this linguistics tangent.
I do know what you mean, the more i have tried to find supportive WIKI articles to include the more lack of continuity I have found, which we need to explain what dyslexia is in the various writing system and then there are is the lack of definition of the neurological reading skills required. The reading article are not very scientific in their approach, and tend to be very opinionated and very single country orientated.
There is a need for a WIKI Reading Project to co-ordinate the reading and literacy articles in WIKI.
The WIKI lingusits need to have a wider outlook to the wider range of issues which require their expert advice and co-ordination. And the WIKI education project seems to be deserted.
I have asked a member Wiki Writing Systems team if he could help resolve some of the issues you have mentioned which may be you should mention to him User talk:Evertype
best wishes Graeme dolfrog (talk) 23:52, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The section in Orthography on "Defectiveness" says: "Another term to describe this characteristic is "deep orthography". (Note that the term "defective orthography" should not indicate that the writing system is flawed ..." The two terms seem to be synonyms; if one of them is more standard in the dyslexia community, by all means, use it here. Indeterminate (talk) 07:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think the content of this article is addressing the topic at a higher level than it should. At this point, the vast majority of the content is describing different types of writing systems/orthographies in general, without anything about how this relates to dyslexia.
I think we need to narrow the focus of the article so that it is clearly about the role that orthography plays in the dyslexic experience.
It is important to set out the differences between the writing systems, and the different orthographies with each writing system. So that we can then define the different neurological skills that each of the different writing systems require to perform the task of reading. And only then can we determine the neurological skill deficits which can cause dyslexia within each writing system. It is possible for an individual to have a specific neurological skill deficit, and be dyslexic in one writing system but not dyslexic in another. So we need to identify these differences so that we can improve our definition of dyslexia in the main article.
Writing systems are man made communication systems to best suite specific groups of humans neurological skill base or their neurological skill strengths. So we need to understand their construction so that we can explain why some humans have problems with these man made systems because they have a different skill base and or a skill base deficit which make and so the communication system may not best suite their own specific skill base and cause them to be dyslexic for a specific writing system.
It is just betting the balance right to provide enough information to describe /define the different writing system so that we can then move on to define the neurological skill base deficits that cause the dyslexic symptoms in each of the different writing systems. dolfrog (talk) 09:57, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is not original research its is combining the research of many researchers and research paper and reviews.
It starts with the documented case of a bilingual child who was dyslexia only in one language see history of dyslexia for details.
research from Germany and china have discussed the different cognitive causes of dyslexia, and from Hong Kong differences between writing systems used in the English and Chinese languages. So the research is there and i have more documentation to add, but so far since May 2009 I have only been able to revise the existing article and not add much if any of the more recent researchor develop the newer sub articles.
This article will obviously share some common information with a range of other WIKI articles to help explain dyslexia, and now the many root causes of dyslexia and can have different results depending on the writing system being use by an individual. So there are two sets variables. The first set of variables are the neurological skills required to perform the task of reading in each writing system, and the resulting orthographies. The second set of the variables are the neurological deficits that cause of dyslexia, or neurological deficits which cause problems developing the required reading skills.
This needs to be a multi-discipline discussion with contributions from linguists, neurologists, those who specialise in Orthography, writing systems, reading skills etc. The research is not original but the concepts may be original to other existing wiki editors who have not read the research. dolfrog (talk) 23:30, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Can you please use plain English instead of all this incomprehensible WIKI jargon I would love to know what you are talking about when you use this private language. dolfrog (talk) 10:51, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The information I've added is definitely not original research, but secondary analysis of previously published scientific research. I've provided one source and will provide more as I try to move the content in the right direction.
I'm not saying you have - but the overall current development proposal by Dolfrog is going way beyond any currently existing secondary analysis of neurological skills /writing systems vs. dyslexia. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 02:25, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
have you the research papers to prove your claim. I have explained on numerous occasions that I need to categories all of the research papers I have on my hard discrs regarding dyslexia, which were needed in the first stage of summering the main dyslexia artilce, I now need to have time to organise this papers in relation to the new specfic sub artilces. If I had more help during the early stages in May and June 2009 from other editors I could have shared these research papers I found them. But there was no one to share them with. Currently I have some 300 or more dyslexia research papers covering a wide range of issues which need cataloging and many of them relate to dyslexia and writing systems. This is not original research. How much research have you done on the topic? dolfrog (talk) 10:42, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Dolfrog,
I think you may be missing the point. A published paper describing research -- hypothesis, method description, results, discussion, conclusion -- is a "primary resource." We cannot use primary resources as a source of information for Wikipedia articles. The research articles you are indexing cannot be used as a source of information for Wikipedia articles because they are primary resources.
Hi Sami, I have added one primary source paper on the orthography sandbox as a source of old research papers listed or mentioned in the Introduction section before the method etc. Which if you try to find them on pubmed may provide you with a few of related review papers regarding those specific topics. More of a method of trying to find what we really want. I need to find out if I have any reviews etc already in my collection to add, which may take some time, so may be others can use pubmed The articles I am listing on the project pageare all reviews of primary research and that is what we are looking for. Some may relate to this and other sub articles in the dyslexia series dolfrog (talk) 03:05, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Most if not all of the research regarding dyslexia and orthographies has been based in and around the Latin alphabet writing system, which is only one sub type of alphabet writing systems. And there are more writing systems. So we need to have summary of each writing system so that we can define the different neurological skills required to perform the task of reading, which varies between writing systems.
This is the only way we can identify the neurological skill deficits which cause individuals to be dyslexic, and explain why some bilingual individuals are only dyslexic in one language.
unfortunately some of the existing wiki articles regarding the main writing systems or orthographies have content problems of their own, which make gaining information from these article difficult. But the failings of these articles is not the fault of the dyslexia project editors, but only demonstrates the need for a more multi-discipline approach to these multi-discipline sets of problems. None of these topics can be treated in isolation which some on all sides may prefer.
I think what dolfrog is trying to say here is that in order to explain how different types of orthographies affect dyslexia symptoms, there has to be at least some basic information provided about the type of orthography. So, for example, when we discuss the research findings for logographic orthographies, it would be a good idea to -- in a sentence or two -- define logographic so it's clear how it is different from other similar orthographic types, such as ideographic orthographies.
Currently, there's way too much of this type of information in the article -- we most definitely should not copy entire sections from related articles and duplicate them here. I'm working on this.
I removed the following information from this article. It is about how the brain processes logographic writing systems. It's great information, but it doesn't fit in the content scope of this article.
1.
Although alphabetic dyslexia seems to originate in the left [[Temporoparietal junction|temporoparietal]] and [[Brodmann area 37|occipitotemporal]] areas of the brain, recent studies indicate that logographic dyslexia is associated with part of the left [[middle frontal gyrus]]. This suggests that "the structural and functional basis for dyslexia varies between alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages."<ref name="siok">{{cite journal
|title=A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers
|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)
|date=2008-04-27
|first=Wai Ting
|last=Siok
|coauthors=Zhendong Niu, Zhen Jin, Charles A. Perfetti, Li Hai Tan
|volume=105
|issue=14
|pages=5561-5566
|doi= 10.1073/pnas.0801750105
|url=http://www.pnas.org/content/105/14/5561
|accessdate=2009-07-15 }}</ref> In other words, alphabetic and logographic dyslexia are most likely separate disorders; a person with alphabetic dyslexia would not necessarily also have logographic dyslexia, and vice versa.
2.
The distinction between these two forms of dyslexia has led to promising therapeutic research. One study led by Alberto Sáez-Rodríguez discovered that syllabic logograms could act as a learning aid to alphabetic-dyslexic English-speaking children. <ref>{{cite journal
|title= Use of syllabic logograms to help dyslexic readers of English visualize abstract words as pictures
|journal=Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology
|date=2009-05-08|first=Alberto |last=Sáez-Rodríguez|volume=7|issue=17|pages=25-48
|url=http://www.investigacion-psicopedagogica.org/revista/new/english/ContadorArticulo.php?334
|accessdate=2009-07-15 }}</ref>
User:Rosmoran
Naturally, I disagree, since I put it in there a few days ago. :) I appreciate that the information is a bit technical, but if you'll look at either the top left or very bottom of this page, you'll notice that Dyslexia falls under the domains of neuropsychology and neurology. All you've done with the section is to replace text which describes the neurologic difference between alphabetic and logographic dyslexia with text which describes Chinese orthography learning. I won't revert your edits, since I'd like input from more people, but I think it's quite important for this article to mention that alphabetic and logographic dyslexia appear to be two entirely separate disorders, according to current research.
I think I was overzealous in removing this information. It should be replaced in the article, perhaps backing off a bit on the two separate disorders claim.
Indeterminate: Would you like to replace it, or should I?
If you want to use some of it, go ahead, I don't mind. You seem to know a lot more about the subject than I do, I'm sure you can fit it into the article better. I've been rethinking my edits, too... I've been a bit hasty the last few days, and now I think I'll wait until I can see what direction you guys are taking the structure of the article before I contribute much new text. For the time being, I'll just keep up with copyediting the article. Indeterminate (talk) 08:36, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
sigh* Okay, nevermind, I'm still being hasty. I started copyediting the article, and it was just impossible without some reorganization, and I guess I got carried away. I summarized my edits at the bottom of this page. And you know what, I still didn't add those neurology sources back in. Now i'm not sure where they would go in the article. Sometimes I hate editing wikipedia. Indeterminate (talk) 11:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, no! You didn't get carried away. You did great! Really. ;-)
How about this, as we all look again at the article content and reorganization, we can consider whether/where to add this info back.
the information is not lost, I have created a sandbox for all of the removed information, and where we can also add further complex issues which need to be summerised or copy-edited before being entered into the main article. This article is still developing in the early stages so the information may be included in the near future, the initial main aim is to have the threat of deletion removed dolfrog (talk) 11:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree that we want the deletion threat removed, the most important thing is to define the scope of content of this article. Adding more information about the writing systems themselves is entirely inappropriate for this article. Additional information about writing systems needs to go into articles about writing systems.
If there is information somewhere supporting the notion that dyslexia in different language systems are entirely different disorders, I have yet to see it. From the research I've seen (from the US, UK, and Hong Kong, primarily, but also some from China), it appears that the differences in dyslexia in different writing systems is which deficit(s) are primary for that language. While phonological awareness is primary in English and orthographic awareness is primary in Chinese, phonological awareness is also necessary in Chinese, and orthographic awareness is also necessary in English. It's just that the most crucial skill in reading one writing system is not the most crucial skill in the other.
Hi Sami
It is that crucial skill difference which determines between being dyslexic and not being dyslexic.
When the crucial skill is matched with neurological skill deficit the deficit causes dyslexia
So the variation of crucial skills and the variation in neurological skill deficits will determine dyslexics for each system.
Dyslexia is not about not being able to read at all, but having a neurological deficit that causes difficulty reading or processing information from a form of visual notation of speech (writing system)
dolfrog (talk) 18:57, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Now that I look at it again, I might have exaggerated. The disorders aren't entirely separate. After all, they present with the same symptoms. But I think you should read the article abstract in the Siok citation above. Their research shows that alphabetic dyslexia is associated with abnormalities in a different area of the brain than logographic dyslexics. There's also the problem of cases like this, where a bilingual Japanese boy has monolingual dyslexia in English. As the Siok abstract says, "The results suggest that the structural and functional basis for dyslexia varies between alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages." But as you say, the required skill sets (phonological and orthographic) overlap a bit.
Hmm. But Rosmoran, I had mostly been looking at this from a neurological perspective. Your arguments have convinced me that it's important to also describe the pedagogical and linguistic perspectives. I agree that it's important to nail down the scope of this article, but the interdisciplinary nature of the topic makes it a bit difficult. I also agree that information about the writing systems themselves is inappropriate. At most, the article should have one or two sentences introducing each type of orthography, then move on to a description of dyslexia in that system.
Just as a final note, too: I'm not married to this article or title. I think "Orthographies and dyslexia" is a somewhat awkward title, and the whole subject is poorly defined. I don't know what to do about it, though. I'm not an expert in dyslexia - I just came here to add some citations and clean up the text. If anyone has better ideas, I'd love to hear them. Indeterminate (talk) 21:39, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Indeterminate said: "... the interdisciplinary nature of the topic makes it a bit difficult (to nail down the scope of the article)."
I couldn't agree more. I feel myself veering off topic sometimes, too. I have a lot of experience writing information that is "chunked" for online delivery, so having to slice and dice topics up into different articles isn't new to me. Sometimes it's pretty clear where the line is, but sometimes it's really, really hard.
What I would propose as our inclusion bar is something like, if the information is critical to understanding what dyslexia in a particular writing system looks like, manifests, or how it is remediated. So, for example, we wouldn't want to go into the details of how dyslexia is remediated for Chinese languages here. But it would be appropriate to say that for Chinese, remediation focuses largely on the linking of the orthography to the semantics of words, and and the motor process and motor memory of writing the characters. We would likewise include a statement about remediation in English -- it focuses largely on manipulating phonemes and learning sound-symbol relationships. We would attempt to avoid very in-depth information about any individual subtopic --- such as lots of details about how the brain processes different types of information -- but a more general statement about what is different in Chinese versus English (or whatever) would be considered appropriate.
Well, you guys, I just had a thought that could cause us to approach this article a bit differently.
Way back when, my intent was to create an article describing how the orthography of the English writing system is a huge contributing factor to the difficulties dyslexics experience. The content of the article would be mostly about spelling, the concept of a deep versus a shallow orthography, but it would also touch on how the history of the English language has created this problematic monolith for new readers of English.
Then, dolfrog rightly pointed out that we were creating a very English-oriented series of articles, and that wikipedia is intended to be more global in content. Then I realized we'd have to include information about how dyslexics in languages with shallow orthographies don't have the same kinds of problems as we have in English. But I was still thinking alphabetic languages.
This led to a realization that we'd have to cover how dyslexia manifests in all different kinds of writing systems. Now that I think about it, this gradual change in perspective obviously means that the intended content of the article has expanded hugely.
So, what I'm thinking now is, maybe our focus on orthography is too narrow. Maybe the topic we really need is Dyslexia in Different Languages, or Dyslexia across the World.
(If so, this could easily mean more than one article. Oy.)
If we describe in this article , what ever its final name may be, the main writing systems and their basic orthographies, and more specifically the different cognitive processes required to use these different orthographies. This will provide a rough guide to the different cognitive skill sets required, and more important the crucial skill per writing system orthography, and which cognitive deficits can cause dyslexic problems in each of these sample orthographies. it could be possible to add information more specific to a particular language in the existing "support by country" series of articles, or something along those lines, just a few ideas. dolfrog (talk) 03:33, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Sami
you said
"So, what I'm thinking now is, maybe our focus on orthography is too narrow. Maybe the topic we really need is Dyslexia in Different Languages, or Dyslexia across the World.
(If so, this could easily mean more than one article. Oy.)"
There is an even bigger spanner which applies to most of the Wikipedia articles in Category:Reading and associated articles, they tend to have a complete lack of a global view with regard to their content, I have unsucessfuly tried to suggest some changes but so far have only met complete resistance, usually based on the lowest common denominator consensus rather than any real understanding of the global issues. dolfrog (talk) 20:48, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, there's absolutely nothing wrong with having an article that primarily addresses dyslexia in English. If you also want to create an article that covers dyslexia in other languages, or summarizes issues in all languages, then that's fine, too.
Wikipedia's rules on "globalization" do not require that every single article have the biggest possible subject. It's okay to write about small subjects, too -- even articles for which absolutely no global perspective exists (e.g., the vast majority of Wikipedia's articles about businesses, people, books, and small towns).
In this context, if Role of English orthography in dyslexia is your subject, then you might reasonably include information that is applicable to most English-speaking countries (e.g., not just the UK), and perhaps in other countries (English as a second language). Well-chosen examples from other languages might be valuable for comparison and contrast, but they're not mandatory. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Removed information about syllabic orthographies that could be useful elsewhere
I removed the following information from this article. It is about how the brain processes syllabic writing systems. It's great information, but it doesn't fit in the content scope of this article.
Syllabaries often begin as simplified logograms, as shown here with the Japanese katakana writing system. To the left is the modern letter, with its original Chinese form on the right.
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents an optional consonant sound followed by a vowel sound.
Languages that use syllabic writing include MycenaeanGreek (Linear B), the Native American language Cherokee, the African language Vai, the English-based creole languageNdyuka (the Afaka script), and Yi language in China. Nü Shu is a syllabary that was used to write the language of the Yao people in China. The Chinese, Cuneiform, and Maya scripts are largely syllabic in nature, although based on logograms. They are therefore sometimes referred to as logosyllabic.
The Japanese language uses two syllabaries together called kana, namely hiragana and katakana (developed around AD 700). They are mainly used to write some native words and grammatical elements, as well as foreign words, e.g. hotel is written with three kana, ホテル (ho-te-ru), in Japanese. Because Japanese uses many CV (consonant + vowel) syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language. As in many syllabaries, however, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that both atta and kaita are written with three kana: あった (a-t-ta) and かいた (ka-i-ta). It is therefore sometimes called a moraic writing system.
I have added two new sub heading to the "Dyslexia and orthographies" section
These two sub sections are the key to whole article, and will require a great deal of input from multi-discipline editors and project teams. Many question have been asked by various research programs and projects in this area and no all as yet have been asnwered. So we can only carefully explain the pistion as it is now, and add any improved understanding of these issues when it is ell supported by research.
"Different writing systems require different combinations of imformation processing skills" This section will define the imformation processing skills which each writing system and its various orthographies require.
"Different information processing skills and different information processing deficits" This section will compare the various skills included above with the various skill deficits which can cause dyslexic issues and how this can vary from one writing system (orthography) to another.
I don't know precisely what dolfrog has in mind, but I have supporting information for "different writing systems require different processing skills" in which some comparisons have been made. There is a huge amount of research demonstrating that the primary deficit in dyslexia in alphabetic languages is phonological awareness. There is a reasonable amount of research demonstrating that the primary deficit in Chinese dyslexics is in orthographic processing, a secondary deficit in motor memory, and to a much lesser extent, phonological awareness. Naming speed deficits occur in both writing systems, and indeed appears to be universal. I have supporting information for other deficits in alphabetic writing systems, but not for additional deficits in other types of writing systems.
Dolfrog, is this the kind of information you were looking to add?
if you have no neurological information processing skill deficits with in the complete range of all the skill sets of all of the writing systesm then you will not be dyslexic in any writing system.
If you have a single neurological information processing deficit, then you will only be dyslexic in the writing system for which that specific skill is crucial, you will not be so dyslexic or dyslexia at all in the other writing systems where your skill deficit is not the crucial skill.
If you have multiple neurological information processing deficits the issues become more complicated but you will possibly be dyslexic in more different writing systems where your deficits are the crucial skills
Hi sami
I agree we have to use existing supporting material, so there may be some holes where the research remains to be done, o we can only reflect the research as it evolves. Research has asked these questions so we have to include the questions with supporting material, but we can not provide answers if the research still needs to be done. So we can not speculate about the eventual answers. But the questions have been asked and we need to reflect that, and provide and supported material which may work towards an eventual set of answers.
It would only be original research if we tried to provide the answers or draw conclusions from existing material to try to provide an answer. This is providing the research that asks the questions, not about trying to answer those questions if the research does not exist. dolfrog (talk) 10:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to summarize the reasons for the fairly extensive changes I ended up making to the article. I just wanted to do nice, simple copyediting and ended up reorganizing the entire article. If it makes you feel any better, it wasn't fun at all. :/
Dyslexia and Orthographies section: I like this section, but most of it is copied and pasted directly from Orthography. I could have rewritten it, but we should never have to deal with two separate but parallel blocks of explanatory text on separate articles. So I gutted this section and changed it to "Dyslexia and orthographic features". Here's the thing: as someone said earlier, Orthography is inconsistent: defectiveness should, as defective script says, refer to an orthography that can't represent all the phonemes in the language. That's definitely distinct from a deep orthography, which is more like an irregular script. Anyway, I'm going to fix Orthography on Monday, adding all this stuff about "shallow" vs. "deep" orthographies, when I'll have access to some authoritative sources to cite. In the meantime, WP will have to do without this vital information. :) Also, I left some incomplete citations; I'll clean them up later.
The two sections with long names: User:dolfrog, I appreciate your work, but please don't leave work-in-progress stuff lying around on a live article. Things like "In this section we will be compare..." isn't really appropriate for an encyclopedia. Also, you don't have to add "See also: Linguistics" to every section. :)
Different writing systems require different combinations of information processing skills
I like this table, it's very nice, but it doesn't say anything about "information processing skills" yet. I get what you're trying to do here - you want to introduce the idea of distinct information processing skills for each type of writing system before comparing them to deficits in dyslexic neurology. I definitely think it's important to introduce the differences between the different types of orthographies, so I moved this down to an introductory section, and removed this section and the one after it. I'm sorry. What do you think? Does it derail your original purpose too much? Oh, I also added another column, to represent the relevant processing skill.
Alphabetic orthographies and dyslexia - Okay, this section said that Arabic has a shallow orthography, and earlier in the same article we just said it was a deep orthography. I'm pretty sure it's deep, since it's a defective script. Anyone know for sure? Well, I moved this whole section up to the section on orthographic depth and dyslexia.
Dyslexia in different types of orthography - I added this as a container section for the alphabetic/logographic/syllabic orthographies and their relationship with dyslexia. I think it provides a good introduction, and the chart actually fits in here pretty well IMHO.
Here's my questions for the future:
1. Should the section on orthographic depth go into the section on alphabetic orthography? Does it even apply to logographic/syllabic orthographies? Technically it should apply to the three other phonemic/etic orthos, but we don't have any information on dyslexia in those, do we?
2. We talk about "Chinese orthographies" as being logographic, but Pinyin is a fairly shallow alphabetic orthography. Should we mention it somewhere?
3. There are some blanks and "Unknown"s in the column I added to the Types of Writing System table. Is there research to fill in those blanks, or should we leave them "Unknown"?
4. Do you really hate my edits? They seem pretty drastic to me, but I tried to delete as little as possible. If you really can't stand my edits, though, go ahead and revert them. I can just make small changes one at a time later. Anyway, please let me know what you think.
Hi Indeterminate
your edits make sense to me. as you may have already gathered by now copy editing is not my strong point. finding the information and understanding the information are my personal strong points, and I do depend on others to re-organise or copy-edit the information I find.
your qustion 1) who would be the best experts to point us in the right direction here, given a few clues I can usually find the relating research.
your question2) we need to point out the different structure of different chinese langaues, I may have sume research papers that may help on this I will need to find them.
your question3) The unknowns may be that the research may have been done but has not been translated into english yet, may be international editors could help out here. I will see what i can find could take a few days.
We really have to be careful to find secondary sources rather than research papers, which are by definition primary sources. We can't just go out looking for research papers for references. Sometimes one sees research papers that are summaries reflecting the current state of research on a particular topic, and I think those are probably OK to consider secondary sources. Otherwise we really can't use them.
Hi Sami before this panic over deletion arose due to impatience, I was about to use some new software to cross reference all of the 300+ research artilces I have on my hard discs regarding dyslexia, Auditory processing disorder and the related issues. before i started out in may I had 150+ such artilces whoch were justy becoming unmanagable, but as I was working alone until recently I did not catalogue the newer articles as I should have I just wanted to get the old article ready to add the new information which is required for the new sub articles. Now that we are begining to build a new team of editors I need to take stock of my collection of research papers, and put them in some order, which may take a few days. I will add any research papers which are relevant to this specific article in this articles Sandbox or Dumping_Ground (see menu at the top of this page) some of which are reviews and secondary sources. dolfrog (talk) 21:17, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, all. This article is starting to shape up! Indeterminate, you did a great job reorganizing this material. I especially appreciate the insight you must have had to have created the section Dyslexia and Orthgraphic Features and the nice ripple effect that has on the resulting reorganization.
Some answers and some opinions: :-)
Arabic is definitely a deep orthography.
Regarding orthographic depth: There are character-based writing systems that have more orthographic depth than others. I can't remember all the specifics offhand, but I know that Chinese has several things that increase its depth: characters represent morphemes mostly, but phonological information is also conveyed; there can be significant variation inside individual characters - additional strokes, etc - that convey additional information, which increases what is called "linear" visual complexity (I gather that the increased processing load results from having to fixate longer on a single character in order to process the additional information inside the character). So, it doesn't just apply to alphabetic languages. What I don't know is to what extent we want to go into this level of detail. I can provide sources for this info, if we decide to include something along these lines.
Pinyin is definitely very shallow, nearly perfectly phonological, if memory serves. My understanding is that pinyin is used primarily as an initial teaching tool for young children starting to learn to read Chinese characters. I don't know whether that makes a difference in terms of whether we include it, but thought I'd mention it for possible consideration.
Again, this article has made great progress in very short order! I'm liking it!
Okay, thank you both for the positive comments, I appreciate it.
Yeah, Rosmoran, now that you mention it, I'm sure that for example Traditional Chinese is probably deeper, or at least less efficient, than Simplified. So it sounds like the Orthographic Features section should stay outside the Types of Orthographies section, even if we just have the one feature (depth) in there.
I think Pinyin is also used for most computer input, but yeah, I just wondered if any of the studies on Chinese dyslexia mentioned it. It's neat to have a country with both a logographic and alphabetic script in fairly wide use.
dolfrog, it sounds like you're on top of the research angle. Thanks for all your hard work.
Also, I'd be surprised if there weren't already plenty of articles on Japanese dyslexia... they're probably just in Japanese. Well, I'll try looking around later this week when I have library access. Indeterminate (talk) 07:30, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would make perfect sense to use pinyin for keyboard input -- I can't imagine how one would use a keyboard to type thousands of characters!
I'm pretty sure I've seen some information about dyslexia in Japanese speakers. I think the IDA has published some Japanese-related articles in Annals of Dyslexia. I'll poke around and see what I can find. Also, Japanese also has an alphabetic orthography (Romaji, used primarily to transliterate Japanese for people who can't read the characters) in addition to its three different systems of character sets. Can you imagine being dyslexic and having to deal with 3 different character sets? Oy.
I wonder how Japanese is type-written? I'd be surprised if they didn't use something like the Romaji, similar to the Chinese using pinyin. Something to keep an eye out for.
I have started a new section on the Dumping Ground / Sandbox for the research papers which may help in one way or another towards the content of this article, the first research paper to be includes is "Neural correlates of mapping from phonology to orthography in children performing an auditory spelling task" July 2007 explanation included dolfrog (talk) 22:33, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Resulting from discussion at Talk:Orthography, I have merged this article on dyslexia to Dyslexia research. Remiss of me, but only then did I become aware of the discussions here. However, this topic is a subset of dyslexia. Imho, there can be no real justification for artificially magnifying a WP topic by creating galleries of comparative subtopics. It is more helpful to a reader to treat such matters in an encyclopedic manner on the fewest possible pages, and not to create a virtual library within Wikipedia. Bjenks (talk) 04:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've given a lot of thought to this, and am prepared to give more. However, the merge has deleted none of the content, merely placed it in its proper context. So I prefer to wait a few days for further comment and maybe consensus. The original article was very controversial. Perhaps the merge is a reasonable compromise which saves all of the material (though much of it still deserves to be treated as unsourced and/or original research). Bjenks (talk) 06:52, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Dolfrog, I have already explained when providing a citation these need to precisely source the information given in the articles. A general relationships to the text is not enough. I have checked the sources you have given when you replaced the "citation needed" tags, and the information is often not in the article you provide. As a result of checking a few and finding that they do not contain the information they should, I have reverted them all.
ex: This article [1] does not contain the information that "Most dyslexia research has been done on alphabetic languages, but the amount of research on logographic and syllabic languages is increasing."
Since this is proving an ongoing problem and causing work for others, can you please do the following? Before adding a citation, please provide, here on the talkpage, the exact sentence or sentences from the journal article that you think sources a sentence in the WP article. --Slp1 (talk) 13:43, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I added a citation for the example given above, and quoted actual phrases to make it easier to find specific sentences in the article. Incidentally, it's also the first case study I've seen on "syllabic" dyslexia, so it might be useful in the Syllabic Orthographies section. And now that I think of it, maybe that section should be renamed to "Other Orthographies". I mean, the classification of Abugida orthographies is still debatable - apparently some people think it's just a subcategory of syllabaries, other people think it's a subcategory of alphabets... hrm.
I also removed a few spurious cn tags - some of them were asking for citations on sentences which were obviously summaries of other pages. In these cases it is recommended not to repeat citations that exist in the main article.
I'm not sure I followed this sequence and the discussion surrounding it correctly. Are we once again in agreement that this article is in the process of becoming "worthy" of keeping, at least for now?
I'm very reluctant to merge this information into the Research article. We're creating an article series *because* the original article became unwieldy.
The position so far.
Gordon referred the article for deletion, and at the same time posted a similar post on the orthography talk page.
The result of the deletion process was to KEEP the article top let it develop.
The Dyslexia research artilce is a Summary page for all of the various different strands of research into dyslexia, genetic research, neuroimaging research, orthographic research, Theories of Dyslexia, and future research article: into cognitive neurology research into dyslexia, cognitive sub types of dyslexia, and cognitive dyslexia remediation research, all of which is beginning in the last year or so, pulling togeher the existing research of the last 2 or 3 decades.
The merge was done as a result of a lack of discussion following Gordons post on the Orthography discussion page wich only had 3 contributions by 2 editors including Gordon. And was done witrh no reference to the Deletion process we went through. So all I did was to restore the article to its state to the result of the Keep result of the Deletion discussion.
As you may have noticed the events of the last few weeks have become too stressful for me, and I can no longer be an active editor on this project. I will continue to research information regarding dyslexia and other related issues for my other nonWIKI interests and the links to my research collections are on my user page User:Dolfrog. I have split my cognitive collection of papers by adding a selection of review papers of interest on the Talk:Theories of dyslexia and Talk:Brain scan research into dyslexia/Dumping ground and i can be contacted using the usual channels. dolfrog (talk) 11:38, 27 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
