Set-shifting profile in students with Dyslexia

Aim. In the recent literature the role of the Executive Functions (EFs) in dyslexia has became a crucial field of interest. In several studies dyslexia has been associated with EFs impairments, whereas other authors didn’t describe any association between dyslexia and difficulties in EFs tasks. Moreover, the main studies evaluating EFs have focused on planning, problem solving, and working memory. Only few studies have investigated the ability of set-shifting, that seems to have a central role in the linguistic elaboration. This study analyzes the set-shifting ability in students with Developmental Dyslexia and in typically developing peers. Method. The sample included 30 students (aged 11 to 14) with a diagnosis of developmental dyslexia (DD) and 124 typically developing peers (TD). Three abilities were assessed: Phonemic Fluency (PF), Semantic Fluency (SF) and Alternate Fluency (AF) through a task already used and standardized for adults (Costa, 2014). Results. Data show a significant difference between the two groups in all the three tasks. We found a lower performance in DD with respect to controls (PF, p = .003; SF, p < .001; AF, p = .005). Moreover both the two groups showed more difficulties in the PF task rather then in the SF and AF tasks. Conclusion. The study confirms the hypothesis of impairments in the executive component represented by set-shifting in adolescents with dyslexia. These findings underline the importance of evaluating this EFs in the clinical setting to better describe the cognitive profile.