Do children with dyslexia and/or specific language impairment compensate for place assimilation? Insight into phonological grammar and representations

Abstract

English speakers have to recognize, for example, that te[m] in te[m] pens is a form of ten, despite place assimilation of the nasal consonant. Children with dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) are commonly proposed to have a phonological deficit, and we investigate whether that deficit extends to place assimilation, as a way of probing phonological representations and phonological grammar. Children with SLI plus dyslexia, SLI only, and dyslexia only listened to sentences containing a target word in different assimilatory contexts-viable, unviable, and no change-and pressed a button to report hearing the target. The dyslexia-only group did not differ from age-matched controls, but the SLI groups showed more limited ability to accurately identify words within sentences. Once this factor was taken into account, the groups did not differ in their ability to compensate for assimilation. The results add to a growing body of evidence that phonological representations are not necessarily impaired in dyslexia. SLI children's results suggest that they too are sensitive to this aspect of phonological grammar, but are more liberal in their acceptance of alternative phonological forms of words. Furthermore, these children's ability to reject alternative phonological forms seems to be primarily limited by their vocabulary size and phonological awareness abilities.

Developmental dyslexia: The difficulties of interpreting poor performance, and the importance of normal performance

“…One option is to keep using simple tasks while manipulating experimental factors of which participants are totally unaware and on which the task does not bear and to look for interactions between group and the manipulated factor. This is indeed precisely what a number of studies that we have reviewed have done, some yielding surprisingly null (but informative) results (e.g., C. R. Marshall et al, 2010), others yielding intriguingly positive ones (e.g., M. Ahissar et al, 2006). Another approach is to use brain imaging techniques to probe levels of representation or processing with minimal (if any) task demandsfor instance, recordings of auditory cortical responses to sound under passive listening conditions (e.g., Lehongre, Ramus, Villiermet, Schwartz, & Giraud, 2011).…”

“…Thus, for example, a cognitively less demanding lexical recognition task such as picture -word matching ("pear" or "bear"?) shows no group differences, even with chronological-age control children, whether in silence or in noise (C. R. Marshall, Ramus, & van der Lely, 2010).…”

“…If certain phonetic features (such as voicing or place of articulation) were less well represented by dyslexic individuals, they should produce less distinct phonological variations (such as assimilations, liaisons), in a manner that is less consistently dependent on phonological context. However, the few studies that have investigated the issue have consistently found normal perceptual compensation for assimilation processes in dyslexia (Blomert, Mitterer, & Paffen, 2004;C. R. Marshall et al, 2010;Szenkovits, Darma, Darcy, & Ramus, 2012).…”

The biological basis of language: insight from developmental grammatical impairments

“…Contrary to a common assumption that SLI originates in a difficulty in processing transient [38]. They can also follow instructions to exchange segments in words, such as converting sad cat to cad sat [37].…”

Heather van der Lely and developmental language disorders: Introduction to the special issue

“…Gayaneh Szenkovits, Quynliaan Darma, Isabelle Darcy and Franck Ramus present a study of the phonology of French dyslexic adults using innovative methods that inspired Heather to collaborate with Franck on a study of English-speaking children with dyslexia (Marshall, Ramus, & van der Lely, 2010). The phonological deficit in dyslexia is wellknown and well-characterised, but what is novel about this work is that adults with dyslexia who still have difficulty with some aspects of phonological processing are found not to differ from unaffected peers in one aspect of phonological grammar -phonological assimilation rules.…”