Predittori delle difficoltà di apprendimento della lingua scritta in una ortografia "trasparente".

Abstract. The present work investigates cognitive abilities implied in early reading in a language (Italian) with high grapheme-phoneme correspondence. A test battery (PACSI) was given to 205 children at the beginning of Grade 1 in order to evaluate the cognitive abilities involved in reading and spelling processes. Six months later, children reading and writing abilities were tested. A cluster analysis (method of k-means) identified three groups with different patterns of reading and spelling problems. According to previous works on transparent orthographies, we found that slowness in reading was the most severe symptom. By means of a discriminant analysis (stepwise-forward method) the scores obtained in the cognitive tests (PACSI) by the children of the three groups were compared with the scores obtained by a control group formed by the same number of children with high scores in reading and spelling. The results confirmed the relation between naming-speed and reading ability found in previous works on transparent orthographies. Our results allow to generalize to children at the beginning of first grade, some of the main results obtained with older children in previous work on language with high grapheme-phoneme correspondence.