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Auditory temporal information processing in preschool children at risk of dyslexia : relations with phonological awareness and developing literacy skills

Bart Boets, Mieke Van Ingelghem, Johan Laneau, Jan Wouters, Astrid Van Wieringen and Pol Ghesquiere

Section of Orthopedagogics and Lab. Exp. ORL, University of Leuven, Belgium Bart.Boets@ped.kuleuven.ac.be

Abstract

Although dyslexia research has been characterized by an abundance of different theories and hypotheses, at present there is a growing consensus that dyslexia may result of a phonological deficit. Moreover, research in the underlying neurological dysfunction of dyslexia suggests that the phonological processing deficit as such may result from a more fundamental deficit in the basic perceptual mechanisms that are responsible for auditory temporal information processing. Dyslexics appear to have difficulties processing linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli which are short and sequenced in rapid succession or which change over time. Consequently, as a result of these perceptual impairments dyslexics are likely to develop subtle speech perception deficits, which will interfere with the development of phonological skills, which in turn impacts upon reading and spelling. To investigate this specific causal hypotheses empirically, we studied auditory temporal processing in relation with phonological skills in two contrasting groups of five year old preschool children, i.e. a genetically high risk and a genetically low risk group. Psychophysical thresholds are estimated for gap detection in noise, frequency modulation detection and tone-in-noise detection using a three-interval, two-alternative forced choice adaptive staircase paradigm embedded within an interactive child friendly computer game. Phonological skills will be measured by phoneme awareness tasks, rapid naming tasks and verbal working memory tasks. In this paper we will briefly discuss the specificity of psychophysical auditory testing in young children and we will present the results of the psychophysical and phonological preschool tests comparing the high risk and the low risk group.

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