The role of metrical stress in comprehension and production in dutch children at-risk of dyslexia

The present study compared the role of metrical stress in comprehension and production of three-year-old children with a familial risk of dyslexia with that of normally developing children. A visual fixation task with stress (mis)matches in bisyllabic words, as well as a non-word repetition task with bisyllabic targets were presented to the control and at-risk children. Results show that the at-risk group is less sensitive to stress mismatches in word recognition than the control group. Correct production of metrical stress patterns did not differ significantly between the groups, but the percentages of phonemes produced correctly were lower for the at-risk than the control group. The findings indicate that processing of metrical stress patterns is not impaired in atrisk children, but that the at-risk group cannot exploit metrical stress in word recognition.