Identification and discrimination of voicing and place-of-articulation in developmental dyslexia

Problems in reading and spelling may arise from poor perception of speech sounds. To study the integrity of phonological access in children with developmental dyslexia (mean age 8 years, 9 months) as compared to two control groups of children (age-matched and matched on reading level), identification and discrimination functions of the features voicing and place-of-articulation were assessed. No differences were found between groups with respect to identification of place-of-articulation. With respect to identification of the voicing contrast, children with developmental dyslexia performed poorer than age-matched controls, but similar to reading-level controls. For the voicing as well as the place-of-articulation contrast, children with developmental dyslexia discriminated poorer than both control groups. This pattern of identification and discrimination performance is discussed relative to the multidimensionality of the speech perception system. The clinical relevance of these perception tasks could be demonstrated by significant negative correlations between performance on the perception tasks and reading and spelling ability. This provided additional support for a functional relation between speech perception and reading and spelling in developmental dyslexia.