EPIC Read · Entrainment and Production In Children with dyslexia

Entrainment and Production In Children with dyslexia

The main objectives of the project were to Identify acoustic markers in production associated with poor phonological processing skills in typically developing children, to determine whether we can predict reading ability based on speech production markers in typically developing children, to Investigate the relationship perception and production ability in children, and to determine whether production indexes contribute to clinical classification of dyslexia. To accomplish these objectives, two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1, we examined speech production and reading ability in typically developing children in first-grade ages 6–7. We tested children at two timepoints: at the beginning of the school year before reading instruction has begun and at the end of the school year. In experiment 2 we investigated how production is associated with other sources of variability in the input such as accents and variability in motor movement skills. For both experiments, we examine measures tapping into production variability, which have been shown to correlate with poor phonemic representations, one of the main hallmarks of dyslexia (high variability=poor phoneme representation). we also extract measurements that are correlated with stress in Spanish and Basque (e.g., duration), the two languages spoken by the participants. Children from Experiment 1 were recruited from the Carmelitas school in Vitoria which includes a junior laboratory for testing school-aged children. Parents signed consent forms and a language questionnaire detailing the languages the children are exposed to on a daily basis. Sixty children have completed a battery of speech production and phonological processing assessments in phase 1 and phase 2. Production ability was measured using a battery of production tasks (naming, word/nonword repetition, sentence repetition), and phonological processing skill will be measured using a composite score of phonological awareness tasks (segmenting, blending, elision, rhyme identification). The production tasks were elicited in multiple repetitions (randomized, with breaks between tasks) which will allow me to obtain the variability measures. Since Spanish is the main language spoken in school, production data will be obtained in Spanish while also controlling for language proficiency. For experiment 2, Thirty children ages 5-8 were recruited in this study. Children completed the same phonological processing battery and speech production battery, and a task where they are exposed to variability in the input (accents Our results from experiment 1 show that children were more variable when production stop consonants and when producing vowels but that their productions were not necessarily less distinct. This suggests that some of the underlying issues in dyslexia are related to how phonological information is stored and accessed but not necessarily that the relationship between the sounds is compromised. These results have potential to change the way we treat dyslexia as it shows a clear connection between perception and production, such that clinicians can use production tasks in order to uncover reading issues or to include it into their treatment plans.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union