Visual, auditory and cross‐modal processing of linguistic and nonlinguistic temporal patterns among adult dyslexic readers

Abstract

This study examined visual, auditory, and cross-modal temporal pattern processing at the nonlinguistic and sublexical linguistic levels, and the relationships between these abilities and decoding skill. The central question addressed whether dyslexic readers are impaired in their perception of timing, as assessed by sensitivity to rhythm. Participants were college-level adult dyslexic and normal readers. The dyslexic adults evidenced generalized impairment in temporal processing: they were less accurate and slower than normal readers when required to detect the temporal gap that differentiated pairs of patterns. Impairment was greatest when processing visual syllables. Temporal pattern processing correlated to decoding ability only among normal readers. It is suggested that high-functioning dyslexics may cope with temporal processing problems by adopting a predominantly holistic, orthographic strategy when decoding. It is proposed that there may be cumulative effects of processing demands from different sources including modality, stimulus complexity, and linguistic demands, and that combinations of these may interact to impact temporal processing ability. Moreover, there may be fundamentally distinct and dissociable temporal processing abilities, each of which may be differently linked developmental dyslexia.

Sequential Versus Simultaneous Processing Deficits in Developmental Dyslexia

“…Indeed, knowing that all cases of developmental dyslexia are not associated with phonological disorders (Bosse et al, 2007), performance may have been influenced by the heterogeneity of the phonological disorders in the dyslexic sample. In line with this hypothesis, Meyler and Breznitz (2005) who reported a phonological deficit in their dyslexic group did find an amodal sequential deficit in their dyslexic participants.…”

“…Disorders extending over several modalities, as expected by the SAS hypothesis, have then been reported (Meyler & Breznitz, 2005). However, a fair amount of data failed to highlight amodal rapid sequential processing disorders in dyslexic individuals, either because of the absence of deficit in the visual modality (e.g., Eddins & Green, 1995;Laasonen et al, 2001;Reed, 1989;Welch, DuttonHurt, & Warren, 1986) or because of the absence of deficits in both modalities (e.g., Bretherton & Holmes, 2003;Laasonen et al, 2000).…”

“…Therefore, we propose that an assessment of SAS amodal deficit in dyslexic participants should be conducted 1) with tasks requiring the processing of long stimulus sequences (see Meyler & Breznitz, 2005, for a similar proposal) and 2) in groups of participants with developmental dyslexia diagnosed with a phonological deficit.…”

Cortical Evoked Response to Gaps in Noise: Within-Channel and Across-Channel Conditions

“…Such populations include but are not limited to older adults (Lister & Tarver, 2004;Lister, et al, 2002), adults with hearing loss (Lister & Roberts, 2005;Roberts & Lister, 2004), adults and children with dyslexia (Conlon, Sanders, & Zapart, 2004;Meyler & Breznitz, 2005;Van Ingelghem, van Wieringen, Wouters, Vandenbussche, Onghena, & Ghesquière, 2001), and Author Manuscript adults and children with auditory neuropathy (Kraus, Bradlow, Cheatham, Cunningham, King, Koch, et al, 2000;Zeng, Oba, Garde, Sininger, & Starr, 1999).…”

Naming Abilities and Orthographic Recognition during Childhood an Event-Related Brain Potentials Study

“…There is agreement on the existence of a primary deficit in developmental dyslexia across languages that involves the neural representation of phonological structures in speech, and this notion has been well documented by several studies (Abrams, Nicol, Zecker, & Kraus, 2009;Bradley & Bryant, 1978;Denckla & Rudel, 1976;Meyler & Breznitz, 2005;Seki, Okada, Koeda, & Sadato, 2004;Wimmer, 1993). However, phonological deficits affect reading in different ways, depending on the orthography children must learn.…”