Duration Perception and Reading in Typically Developing Adults and Adults with Developmental Dyslexia: Implications for Assessment and Intervention

Abstract

While the link between beat perception and reading skills is attributed to a general improvement in neural entrainment to speech units, duration perception (DP) is primarily linked to a specific aspect of speech perception, specifially discriminating phonemes of varying lengths. Our previous study found a significant correlation between DP and pseudoword reading in both typically developing (TD) individuals and adults with dyslexia (DD). This suggests that, like beat, DP may also enhance overall speech perception. However, our previous study employed a composite measure that did not discriminate speed from accuracy. In this study, we sought to replicate the link between DP and pseudoword reading in a new sample and explore how it might vary depending on the reading parameter being measured. We analyzed the performance of 60 TD vs. 20 DD adults in DP, word reading and pseudoword reading tasks, analyzing the latter for both speed and accuracy. Indeed, duration skills correlated positively with pseudoword reading accuracy. In TD adults, there was no association between DP and reading speed, whereas DD individuals exhibited slower reading speed alongside improved duration skills. We emphasize the potential usefulness of DP tasks in assessment and early intervention and raise new questions about compensatory strategies adopted by DD adults.