Early Language Characteristics of Dyslexia in Sri Lankan Sinhala Speaking Children: Observational Study.

Introduction: Dyslexia is a term describing specific reading impairments. Language lays the foundation for reading. Sinhala is an alpha-syllabic language with opaque orthography. The majority of evidence available on dyslexia is based on research on the English language which is an alphabetic language with opaque orthography. While there are universal features of dyslexia, common to all languages, there are also language specific characteristics. Early identification of dyslexia based on these language specific features can lead to early interventions and better outcomes. Therefore, this study aimed to identify language specific characteristics of dyslexia in Sinhala speaking children aged between 5 to 7 years with the intention of expanding knowledge about developmental patterns of dyslexia in an alpha-syllabic opaque orthographic language. Methodology: A qualitative observational study was conducted on children diagnosed with dyslexia from the learning disability clinic at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. Forty-minute semistructured observations were conducted and results were analyzed according to selected themes. Thirty children participated. Results: The majority of children showed significant deficits in the areas of language comprehension, higher language skills, phoneme awareness, phonological segmenting and blending, while few showed deficits in morphological markers. Most of the participants were alphabetic readers while a few were logographic readers. Letters with modifiers were difficult for children to read. Children with better language skills showed better reading comprehension. Reading rate and accuracy was better in children with good visual processing skills while reading fluency was better in children with good phonological skills. Letter reversal was a less prominent feature but omission and substitution of modifiers was a common feature of Sinhala writing. Conclusion: While there are universal features of dyslexia, there are language specific features associated with dyslexia in Sinhala. Therefore, identifying language specific characteristics of dyslexia across languages is important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]