Speech perception and memory coding in relation to reading ability

Impaired Speech Perception in Poor Readers: Evidence from Hearing and Speech Reading

“…This claim is compatible with other results showing that poor readers have a speech deficit. For instance, Brady, Shankweiler, and Mann (1983) found that poor readers had more difficulty than good readers in identifying words presented in noise, while there was no difference between the groups when environmental sounds were used.…”

“…So did Irasquin and de Gelder (1997) in a study that found impaired perception for a place of articulation continuum. Brady, Shankweiler, and Mann (1983) found evidence that the deficit is speech specific. They compared normal and slow readers on their ability to discriminate speech and nonspeech sounds under ideal and noisy listening conditions.…”

“…Poor readers count as normal in on-line perception of spoken language, but a small number of studies have reported inferior perception of auditory verbal stimuli by poor readers (Brady, Poggie, & Merlo, 1986;Brady, Shankweiler, & Mann, 1983;de Weirdt, 1988;Godfrey, Syrdal-Laskey, Millay, & Knox. 1981;Lieberman, Meskill, Chatillon, & Schupack, 1985;Reed, 1989;Tallal, 1980;Werker & Tees, 1987).…”

Auditory word identification in dyslexic and normally achieving readers

“…Phonological deficits are thought to underlie critical components of the reading process such as the learning of spelling-sound correspondences and the development of efficient word recognition (Bruck, 1992;Rack, Snowling, & Olson, 1992;Share, 1995;Stanovich & Siegel, 1994). Phonological deficits may also be causally related to specific kinds of language processing difficulties outside the domain of reading, including poor phonological awareness (Bruck, 1992;Liberman & Shankweiler, 1985;Manis, Custodio, & Szeszulski, 1993;Pratt & Brady, 1988;Swan & Goswami, 1997), inefficient use of verbal working memory (Berninger et al, 2006;Brady, Shankweiler, & Mann, 1983;Griffiths & Snowling, 2002;McDougall, Hulme, Ellis, & Monk, 1994), and slow access to the mental lexicon as manifested in naming tasks (Denckla & Rudel, 1976;Wolf & Bowers, 1999).…”

Neural plasticity following auditory training in children with learning problems

“…This has been attributed to inadequate phonological awareness skills and/or difficulties in perceiving brief sounds (including rapid spectral changes) which occur in speech (Golden and Steiner, 1969;Godfrey et al, 1981;Lieberman et al, 1985;Werker and Tees, 1987;Liberman et al, 1989;Reed, 1989;Elbro et al, 1994;Torgesen and Barker, 1995;Kraus et al, 1996;Merzenich et al, 1996;Stark and Heinz, 1996;Tallal et al, 1996;Mody et al, 1997;Schulte-Koerne et al, 1999). Of particular importance for some learning-impaired children is that these perceptual deficits can be absent in quiet, but manifested in noise typical of everyday listening situations (Elliot et al, 1979;Brady et al, 1983;Chermak et al, 1989;Cunningham et al, 2001;Bradlow et al, 2003).…”