Effect of time and frequency manipulation on syllable perception in developmental dyslexics

KI McAnally, PC Hansen, PL Cornelissen, JF Stein

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Many people with developmental dyslexia have difficulty perceiving stop consonant contrasts as effectively as other people and it has been suggested that this may be due to perceptual limitations of a temporal nature. Accordingly, we predicted that perception of such stimuli by listeners with dyslexia might be improved by stretching hem in time-equivalent to speaking slowly. Conversely, their perception of he some stimuli ought to be made even worse by compressing them in time-equivalent to speaking quickly. We tested 15 children with dyslexia on their ability to identify correctly consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) stimuli that had been stretched or compressed in the time domain. We also tested their perception of he same CVC stimuli after the formant transitions had been stretched or compressed in the frequency domain. Contrary to our predictions, we failed to Find any systematic improvement in heir performance with either manipulation. We conclude that simple manipulations in the time and frequency domains ore unlikely to benefit the ability of people with dyslexia to discriminate between CVCs containing stop consonants.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)912-924
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research (JSLHR)
Volume40
Issue number4
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 1997

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