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

Problems in reading and spelling may arise from poor perception of speech s ounds. To study the integrity of phonological access in children with devel opmental dyslexia (mean age 8 years, 9 months) as compared to two control g roups of children (age-matched and matched on reading level), identificatio n and discrimination functions of the features voicing and place-of-articul ation 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 poo rer than age-matched controls, but similar to reading-level controls. For t he voicing as well as the place-of-articulation contrast, children with dev elopmental dyslexia discriminated poorer than both control groups. This pat tern of identification and discrimination performance is discussed relative to the multidimensionality of the speech perception system. The clinical r elevance of these perception tasks could be demonstrated by significant neg ative correlations between performance on the perception tasks and reading and spelling ability. This provided additional support for a functional rel ation between speech perception and reading and spelling in developmental d yslexia.