Discrimination of speech sounds by children with dyslexia: Comparisons with chronological age and reading level controls

Caroline Bogliotti (1) , Willy Serniclaes (2) , Souhila Messaoud-Galusi (3) , Liliane Sprenger-Charolles (2)

1 MoDyCo - Modèles, Dynamiques, Corpus
2 LPP - UMR 8242 - Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception
3 DPL - Department of Phonetics and linguistics

Previous studies have shown that children suffering from develop- mental dyslexia have a deficit in categorical perception of speech sounds. The aim of the current study was to better understand the nature of this categorical perception deficit. In this study, cat- egorical perception skills of children with dyslexia were compared with those of chronological age and reading level controls. Children identified and discriminated /do–to/ syllables along a voice onset time (VOT) continuum. Results showed that children with dyslexia discriminated among phonemically contrastive pairs less accu- rately than did chronological age and reading level controls and also showed higher sensitivity in the discrimination of allophonic contrasts. These results suggest that children with dyslexia per- ceive speech with allophonic units rather than phonemic units. The origin of allophonic perception in the course of perceptual development and its implication for reading acquisition are discussed.

Mots clés: Dyslexia; Categorical perception; Speech development; Allophonic perception

Mots clés: Dyslexie; Perception catégorielle; développement de la parole; perception allophonique

Domaines: Linguistique

Caroline Bogliotti, Willy Serniclaes, Souhila Messaoud-Galusi, Liliane Sprenger-Charolles. Discrimination of speech sounds by children with dyslexia: Comparisons with chronological age and reading level controls. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2008, 101, pp.137-155. ⟨10.1016/j.jecp.2008.03.006⟩. ⟨halshs-00468930⟩