Online Indicators of Written Production: ‘Bio-Behavioural’ Markers of Dyslexia–Dysorthographia?

Dyslexia-dysorthographia is a neurodevelopmental disorder in which the symptoms appear during the person's development (generally around the age of 7 or 8) and persist throughout life. The study of this written language disorder mainly focuses on children, principally in the clinical, cognitive science and neuroscience fields. The importance and originality of this study are that it investigates the impact of dyslexia-dysorthographia on written production in young adults (students) with dyslexia, from a psycholinguistic perspective. To do this, students and matched-control individuals were asked to produce written texts on the same theme. These productions were then analysed, observing on-line indicators, such as pause location and duration. The current investigation found that students with dyslexia still have important difficulties with writing and their lack of automation in spelling has consequences on the transcription and planning process: although they have the same handwriting speed, pressure and word rate as control students, they make longer pauses before words, especially before short and long words, words involving grammatical inflexion, grammatical words and punctuation.