The relationship of phonological ability, speech perception, and auditory perception in adults with dyslexia

Abstract

This study investigated whether auditory, speech perception, and phonological skills are tightly interrelated or independently contributing to reading. We assessed each of these three skills in 36 adults with a past diagnosis of dyslexia and 54 matched normal reading adults. Phonological skills were tested by the typical threefold tasks, i.e., rapid automatic naming, verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness. Dynamic auditory processing skills were assessed by means of a frequency modulation (FM) and an amplitude rise time (RT); an intensity discrimination task (ID) was included as a non-dynamic control task. Speech perception was assessed by means of sentences and words-in-noise tasks. Group analyses revealed significant group differences in auditory tasks (i.e., RT and ID) and in phonological processing measures, yet no differences were found for speech perception. In addition, performance on RT discrimination correlated with reading but this relation was mediated by phonological processing and not by speech-in-noise. Finally, inspection of the individual scores revealed that the dyslexic readers showed an increased proportion of deviant subjects on the slow-dynamic auditory and phonological tasks, yet each individual dyslexic reader does not display a clear pattern of deficiencies across the processing skills. Although our results support phonological and slow-rate dynamic auditory deficits which relate to literacy, they suggest that at the individual level, problems in reading and writing cannot be explained by the cascading auditory theory. Instead, dyslexic adults seem to vary considerably in the extent to which each of the auditory and phonological factors are expressed and interact with environmental and higher-order cognitive influences.

Morphological Awareness and Its Role in Compensation in Adults with Dyslexia

“…Assessment methods followed the same procedures as those expressed in Law et al . () and are described as follows:…”

Increased Response to Altered Auditory Feedback in Dyslexia: A Weaker Sensorimotor Magnet Implied in the Phonological Deficit

“…Although many studies focused on deficiencies in perceiving consonants, the perception and production of vowels is also less precisely defined (Bertucci, Hook, Haynes, Macaruso, & Bickley, 2003;Stark & Heinz, 1996). Although a large number of studies showed perception deficits in DD, it should be noted that speech perception deficits were not always found in the majority of people with DD (Manis et al, 1997), not for all phonetic contrasts (Cornelissen, Hansen, Bradley, & Stein, 1996), and not always in silent (Ziegler et al, 2009) or in noise conditions (Hazan, MessaoudGalusi, & Rosen, 2012;Law, Vandermosten, Ghesquiere, & Wouters, 2014). Although the majority of studies show that people with DD have deficient perceptual abilities, resulting in less precise or degraded phonological representations, another perspective on the perception deficit comes from Serniclaes, Van Heghe, Mousty, Carré, and SprengerCharolles (2004).…”

Behavioral and Molecular Genetics of Reading-Related AM and FM Detection Thresholds

“…The theory is that if readers perceive basic acoustic cues poorly, the result will be inaccurate perception of speech sounds that necessarily map poorly onto the visual symbols (letters) for reading (Law et al 2014; McAnally and Stein 1996). Studies on the development of reading and reading disability or dyslexia , also support a theory known as the auditory deficit hypotheses of reading (Boets et al 2011).…”

“…Several studies, including those that included children at risk for dyslexia due to family history, report significant associations between either AM or FM modulations and specific skills associated with reading development (Boets et al 2007). Specifically, AM perception tasks, though varying in exact parameters and sometimes referred to as “rise time” in the literature, have been associated with phonological awareness, syllable detection and non-word reading (Goswami et al 2002; Hamalainen et al 2013; Law et al 2014). Likewise, increased FM thresholds have predicted reduced non-word and single word reading performance (Talcott et al 2003; Talcott et al 2000; Witton et al 2002).…”