ARE SPEECH-PERCEPTION DEFICITS ASSOCIATED WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DYSLEXIA

Phonological awareness and phoneme identification tasks were administe red to dyslexic children and both chronological age (CA) and reading-l evel (RL) comparison groups. Dyslexic children showed less sharply def ined categorical perception of a bath-path continuum varying voice ons et time when compared to the CA but not the RL group. The dyslexic chi ldren were divided into two subgroups based on phoneme awareness. Dysl exics with low phonemic awareness made poorer /b/-/p/ distinctions tha n both CA and RL groups. bur dyslexics with normal phonemic awareness did not. Examination of individual profiles revealed that the majority of subjects in each group exhibited normal categorical perception. Ho wever, 7 of 25 dyslexics had abnormal identification functions, compar ed to 1 subject in the CA group and 3 in the RL group. The results sug gest that some dyslexic children have a perceptual deficit that may in terfere with processing of phonological information. Speech perception difficulties may also be partially related to reading experience. (C) 1997 Academic Press.