21 General introduction 1 were addressed by BSc andMSc students andwhen schools agreed to participate parents were informed about the research and asked for permission. Parents of all children within the control groups gave active consent to participate in the presented studies. Outline of this thesis This thesis studied clinical data in order to find out more about two possible ways of compensating for a phonological deficit in reading and spelling development of children with dyslexia. Each chapter in the present thesis represents an empirical article. Each of these articles have been accepted for publication. The goal of Chapter 2 was to explore the direct and indirect contribution of semantic abilities to the levels of phonological and orthographical abilities in 55 children with dyslexia. Semantic abilities, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming and, verbal working memory were included as precursor measures. In Chapter 3, an attempt was made to test the response to intervention in a phonics through spelling intervention for 54 children with dyslexia in word and pseudoword reading efficiency, and word spelling. Furthermore, we investigated to what extent the response to intervention is robust across different cognitive profiles (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, andworkingmemory). Response to intervention was studied using change-scores. Chapter 4 examined the differences in phonological, morphological, and orthographic spelling errors between 52 children with dyslexia and 105 typically developing spellers. Cognitive profiles (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, working memory, and semantic abilities) of children with dyslexia were related to these errors with a special interest for the effect of semantic abilities. Furthermore, the response to a phonics through spelling intervention was measured by studying the change in spelling errors and profiles. The change in each spelling error category was related to cognitive profiles as well, again with a special interest for the effects of semantic abilities. Chapter 5 reports about the extent to which reading and spelling performances of 54 children with dyslexia both before and after a phonics through spelling intervention were predicted by their verbal learning and consolidation. The ability to learn and maintain verbal information and its influence on reading and spelling measured before the intervention were compared to 36 typically developing children. Response to intervention was studied using change-scores.
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