Influences of Processing Suprasegmental Features on Phonological Awareness and Reading Skills of Dyslexic Children

In an attempt to illuminate some of the underlying causes of phonological deficit in dyslexia we investigated the influences of processing suprasegmental acoustic features on children’s phonological awareness and reading and spelling abilities. In the English cohort tested (N=65) the processing of duration but not of intensity in 9-year old dyslexic children was significantly poorer than in age-matched normally-reading controls. Furthermore, the dyslexics were significantly poorer in processing the rise times of amplitude modulations. Although both duration and rise times of amplitude envelope thresholds were correlated with reading and spelling, only rise time thresholds showed a significant relationship with phonological awareness measures. These findings illuminate the importance of processing suprasegmental information for developing reading skills.