The results show similarities between the performances of children with SLI and dyslexia on tasks tapping subject-verb agreement, phonological awareness, and non-word repetition: they scored more poorly than typically developing children. Qualitative analyses revealed, however, differences in the error patterns on all three tasks. Associations between non-word repetition and sensitivity to subject-verb agreement were found, suggesting that problems with phonological processing impact on morphosyntactic skills.

No abstract

This study examined auditory processing in 2-month-old infants at genetic risk for dyslexia and in controls. Manipulated natural speech stimuli (/bAk/ and /dAk/), at either side of the phoneme boundary, were presented to these infants and their automatic cortical deviance responses were recorded. Control infants showed two distinct mismatch responses, thus extending similar findings reported with kindergartners in terms of topographical distribution and cortical sources. The absence of such mismatch responses in the infants at risk supports the hypothesis of basic auditory (temporal) processing impairments in the disorder. The results suggest that these early signs of deficient auditory processing may point to problematic categorical perception at a later age.

No abstract