37 Impact of semantics on word decoding 2 All children had been referred to a reading clinic by their parents and teachers. Teachers had to prove resistance to treatment (after 10‐ to 12‐week interventions) and constant weak performances for 1.5 years (word reading scores below 10th percentile or below 15th percentile combined with spelling scores below 10th percentile) for these children. All children were diagnosed with severe dyslexia and received in‐service reading and/or spelling interventions. The mean age of this group of children during assessment was 8.55 years (SD = 1.051). Children were in Grade 2 (n = 16), Grade 3 (n = 25), Grade 4 (n = 10), Grade 5 (n = 3), and Grade 6 (n = 2). Out of the group of 55 children, 15 children attended the same class an extra year. Parents gave active consent to let their child participate in the present research. Because of the large variation in age, age was included as a covariate in the analyses. Measures Reading measures Pseudoword decoding Pseudoword decoding was measured by the “Klepel” (Van den Bos et al., 1994). In this task, the child had to read as many meaningless words as possible correctly within a time limit of two minutes. The card contained 116 unrelated pseudowords that had the same structure as meaningful words. Words became more difficult gradually from one syllable (“taaf”) up to five syllables (“nalleroonplinteng”). An efficiency measure (the number of words correctly read within two minutes) was calculated. The reliability of this measure differs per age but is at least .89 (Van den Bos et al., 1994). Word decoding Word decoding was measured by the “Brus One Minute Test” (Brus & Voeten, 1973). In this task, the child had to read as many meaningful words correctly as possible within a time limit of one minute. The card contained 116 unrelated words. Words became more difficult gradually from one syllable (“waar” [true]) up to four syllables (“tekortkoming” [shortcoming]). Am efficiency measure (the number of words correctly read within one minute) was calculated. The reliability of this measure differs per age but is at least .87 (Van den Bos et al., 1994). Precursor measures Phonological awareness Phonological awareness was measured by adding the z‐scores of two subtests from the “Screening Test for Dyslexia” (Kort et al., 2005b). First, during “PhonemeDeletion”, the child had to omit a phoneme froman orally presentedword and speak out the remainingword (e.g., “dak” [roof] minus k [f] is “da” [roo]). Testing was terminated after four consecutive
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