title: Visuoperceptual-orthographic reading abilities: a confirmatory factor analysis study.
abstract: The current study examined the psychometric properties of a hypothetical visuoperceptual-orthographic (VPO) reading construct in a sample of nonimpaired college students (N = 152). Participants were administered a battery of standardized and experimental measures of VPO, including Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ-III) Letter-Word Identification (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001), Visual-Naming Speed (word page of the Stroop), Letter-Identification Task, Same/Different Letter Decision Task, Word Matching Task, Homophone Decision Task, Pseudohomophone Decision Task, and Word Jumble Task. The LISREL 8.54 computer program (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 2003) was employed for confirmatory factor analysis to assess the tenability of a multifaceted, unitary VPO reading construct. Goodness-of-fit statistics indicated that VPO is a hierarchically organized construct with one 2nd-order factor (i.e., VPO) and three 1st-order factors (i.e., perceptual processing speed, prelexical accuracy, and lexicosemantic accuracy). Alternative models were tested but produced unsatisfactory goodness-of-fit statistics. Altogether these findings are in agreement with those of previous cognitive and neuroscientific studies and further support the notion that VPO should be viewed as a unique factor in the assessment, diagnosis, and remediation of developmental dyslexia.
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Department of Psychology, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA. qrmano@uwm.edu
authors.forename: Quintino R
authors.initials: QR
authors.lastname: Mano
authors.forename: David C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Osmon
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*