Abstract

In the present paper cognitive developmental studies on phonological dyslexia frequently occurring during the acquisition of an alphabetic orthography are reviewed and cases of persons who use the visuospatial orthography(idiographs) and language(sign language) are discussed. Alphabetic scripts are acquired through the logographic, alphabetic, and orthographic phases. Children who have problems in phoneme segmentation have difficulty proceeding into the alphabetic phase and show ceding difficulty. Some of them compensate their phonological problems by matching sounds and forms of the words using semantic contexts. Those who cannot compensate proceed slowly into the alphabetic phase with training. Idiographs in which every character has its own meaning are easy to learn in the beginning, but become gradually more difficult since people need to learn so many characters. Deaf children, when they learn scripts, depend on the visual forms of the letters and words, and are sometimes affected by their own language(sign language). Dyslexia during the acquisition of the scripts varies depending upon the cognitive abilities of the children, and the types of the orthography and the language.