Characterizing Different Types of Developmental Dyslexias in French: The Malabi Screener

Reading is a complex process involving multiple stages whose impairment may cause distinct types of reading deficits. We describe the Malabi, a screener to identify deficits in various orthographic, lexical, and sublexical components in French. Malabi uses stimuli sensitive to different dyslexias, including attentional dyslexia, an impairment in letter-to-word binding leading to letter migrations between words (“bar cat” may be misread as “bat car”), and letter-position dyslexia, leading to letter transposition errors (“destiny” may be misread as “density”). After collecting reading error norms from 138 French middle-school students, we analyzed error types of 16 dyslexic students. We identified three selective cases of attentional dyslexia and one case of letter-position dyslexia. Further tests replicated our interpretation and explored factors modulating letter migration between- and within- words. Our results support prior evidence of multiple developmental dyslexias, including deficits rooted in impaired orthographic rather than phonological processing.