The rapid naming is visual identification, right? So these results indicate that basically anything that he has to process visually or with writing is notably slower than the tasks he can complete using only his aural-oral connection?
Which feels like it puts us back in the visual processing realm.
How would a dyspraxia/motor planning diagnosis affect his visual processing? Would this be an expected consequence of that type of diagnosis?
And yes, his spelling utterly falls apart when he has to use it in context. Even if he spells the word correctly orally before he writes it or has it written in front of him, he still frequently writes it wrong and erases multiple times. He even forgets spaces between words still.
It's maybe not exactly visual processing. He also did well on the reading fluency measures, which require some visual processing, but are also language processing, and have minimal motor organization demands.
Rapid naming has to do largely with retrieval efficiency, which can affect reading (and hence dyslexia), but specifically doesn't appear to be affecting his reading skills at this point, just his spelling skills. So in that sense, it does relate to stealth dyslexia, but probably, at this point, more accurately, the other name for that, which is compensated dyslexia.
The rapid naming deficit relates to motor planning in that he is less efficient at motor tasks which are automatic for other people--such as letter formation, writing mechanics (spelling, punctuation, capitalization). He can spell in isolation because he can devote all of his cognition to it. In applied situations, his peers rely on automatically retrieving handwriting and spelling skills, while he is still using cognition for those basic skills, or inefficiently searching his memory stores for how to execute them, which occupies too much of even his prodigious working memory. Typical of dysgraphics: write, spell, or compose language--pick any one.
And the TOWL is really best for identifying dysgraphia--but that's really top of mind at the moment. Any dyslexic traits appear to be largely remediated at this point.
