Word reading and reading-related skills in Hebrew-speaking adolescents with Williams syndrome

This study investigated word reading and reading-related skills in 17 Hebrew-speaking individuals with Williams syndrome, ages 11-22. Reading of real words was at the third grade level, yet six participants could not read nonce words at all. The relatively high percentage of nonreaders could be a consequence of the special characteristics of Hebrew orthography, which realizes consonants as letters and vowels as diacritic dots and dashes below and above the line. In the group as a whole, reading real and nonce words did not correlate with rapid naming. Yet, contrary to research on dyslexia, word reading correlated with IQ as well as with performance on phonological awareness tasks.