Dyslexic students in higher education: different profiles ?

The present project developed at the University of Louvain (UCL, Belgium) aims to better understand the profiles of dyslexic students, focusing on the heterogeneity of this population. Up to now, research was carried out on group studies, which tend to hide individual differences. However wide variations in the pattern of performances were observed between individuals (Erskine & Seymour, 2005). Beyond its theoretical interest, this study has also clinical purposes, namely to improve diagnosis, remediation and accommodations offered to the dyslexic students according to their specific profile. We compared 95 French-speaking students diagnosed with dyslexia in childhood and 25 students diagnosed at university. All students requested themselves an assessment in order to ask educational accommodations. The following components were assessed: reading (accuracy, speed and comprehension), spelling (accuracy and speed), text writing, phonological awareness, verbal memory (short- and long-term), rapid naming and non-verbal speed processing. All data were analysed with different statistical tests: descriptive analyses, group comparison (non-parametric Mann-Whitney-U test) and clustering. The study showed that students diagnosed in childhood performed poorer on most tasks. More comorbidity was also observed in this group. Moreover the results confirmed the heterogeneity of the dyslexic‘s performances. Different profiles were identified, especially in relation to reading, spelling and verbal memory performances. The study should be continued to increase the number of participants, to create a control group, and to analyse the predictors of reading and spelling performances in this specific population