It's about time: revisiting temporal processing deficits in dyslexia

Abstract

Temporal processing in French children with dyslexia was evaluated in three tasks: a word identification task requiring implicit temporal processing, and two explicit temporal bisection tasks, one in the auditory and one in the visual modality. Normally developing children matched on chronological age and reading level served as a control group. Children with dyslexia exhibited robust deficits in temporal tasks whether they were explicit or implicit and whether they involved the auditory or the visual modality. First, they presented larger perceptual variability when performing temporal tasks, whereas they showed no such difficulties when performing the same task on a non-temporal dimension (intensity). This dissociation suggests that their difficulties were specific to temporal processing and could not be attributed to lapses of attention, reduced alertness, faulty anchoring, or overall noisy processing. In the framework of cognitive models of time perception, these data point to a dysfunction of the 'internal clock' of dyslexic children. These results are broadly compatible with the recent temporal sampling theory of dyslexia.

Successful second language learning is tied to robust domain-general auditory processing and stable neural representation of sound

“…The auditory processing impairments which we find to be tied to difficulties with second language acquisition are strikingly similar to the auditory difficulties which have been linked to developmental language disorders. Children with dyslexia, for example, are more likely to display problems with the perception of temporal and spectral features (Ahissar, Protopapas, & Merzenich, 2000;Talcott et al, 2000;Amitay, Ahissar, & Nelken, 2002;Gibson, Hogben, & Fletcher, 2006;Goswami et al, 2010;Casini, Pech-Georgel, & Ziegler, 2017), to struggle to synchronize to a metronome (Thomson & Goswami, 2008), to have difficulty remembering rhythmic patterns (Flaugnacco et al, 2014), and to have neural responses to sound which are more variable across trials (Hornickel & Kraus, 2013;Lizarazu et al, 2015). Some research in second language acquisition assumes that first language acquisition in childhood and second language acquisition in adulthood are characterized by different underlying mechanisms (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2009;DeKeyser, Alfi-Shabta, & Ravid, 2010).…”

How the Science of Reading Informs 21st‐Century Education

“…Some of these approaches are based on the tenet that temporal processing deficits in the auditory (e.g., Tallal, 1984) and visual (e.g., Stein, 2019) systems of the brain are causally related to poor word-reading development. Although there is some evidence that typically developing and struggling readers differ on measures tapping auditory (Casini, Pech-Georgel, & Ziegler, 2018;Protopapas, 2014) and visual (e.g., Eden et al, 1996;Olson & Datta, 2002) processing skills, there is little evidence to support the use of instructional programs designed to improve auditory or visual systems to ameliorate reading problems (Strong, Torgerson, Torgerson, & Hulme, 2011). Further, interventions designed to decrease visual confusion (e.g., Dyslexie font) or modify transient channel processing (e.g., Irlen lenses) to improve reading skill for students with reading disability have also failed to garner scientific support (Hyatt, Stephenson, & Carter, 2009;Iovino, Fletcher, Breitmeyer, & Foorman, 1998;Marinus et al, 2016).…”

Teachers, not parents, are able to predict time processing skills in preschoolers

“…Time processing difficulties have been identified in association with developmental disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Smith, Taylor, Warner Rogers, Newman, & Rubia, ; Walg, Hapfelmeier, El‐Wahsch, & Prior, ), developmental dyslexia (Casini, Pech‐Georgel, & Ziegler, ), developmental dyscalculia (Moll, Göbel, Gooch, Landerl, & Snowling, ), autism spectrum disorder (ASD; Isaksson et al ., ), and borderline intellectual functioning (Di Nuovo et al ., ). Considering children who are of preschool age, time processing problems have been found in individuals at risk of developing difficulties in mathematics (Tobia, Rinaldi, & Marzocchi, ).…”