110 Chapter 5 The present study The present study investigated the compensatory role of verbal learning and consolidation in reading and spellingof childrenwith (n = 54) andwithout dyslexia (n = 36). Additionally, the role of verbal learning and consolidation on the response to a phonics through spelling intervention of children with dyslexia was examined in order to find out whether expanding the specificity and redundancy of the (phonological) lexicon helps children with dyslexia. Verbal learning was measured by a list learning task in which children were verbally presented with a list of 15 meaningful words. Immediately after hearing the words, the children were asked to recall as many words as possible in a random order. The same list was presented five times in a row and each time the child had to name as many of the presented words as possible. Following Van Strien and colleagues (2008), the result of the first trial is seen as an index of immediate memory span and the change in performance over the five trials as a measure of verbal learning. After a 30-minute delay, children were asked to name all the words they remembered. The outcome was called the verbal consolidation. We first studied the similarities and differences in verbal learning and consolidation between children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Next, we examined the relation between the individual differences in verbal learning and consolidation of both groups and their reading and spelling outcomes (before the intervention) by means of regression analyses, controlling for phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal working memory, and semantic abilities. Furthermore, we examined the relation between verbal learning and consolidation and the response to intervention among children with dyslexia again with regression analyses and inclusion of the prementioned control variables. The present study investigated the extent to which verbal learning and consolidation predict reading and spelling levels and intervention outcomes in children with dyslexia. Based on the lexical quality hypothesis (see Perfetti, 2007), we expected that better verbal learning and consolidation are related to better reading and spelling outcomes, evenmore so for childrenwithdyslexia (seeShaywitzet al., 2003). Furthermore, we expected that better verbal learning and consolidation are positively related to responsiveness to intervention in children with dyslexia due to the enhancement of lexical representations as well. Method Participants Participants were children diagnosed with developmental dyslexia (37 boys, 17 girls) and typically developing children (12 boys, 24 girls). All participants spoke Dutch as their first language and all parents gave active consent to use the collected data for research purposes.
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