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The nature of the phonological processing in French dyslexic children: evidence for the phonological syllable and linguistic features' role in silent reading and speech discrimination

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Abstract

This study investigated the status of phonological representations in French dyslexic children (DY) compared with reading level- (RL) and chronological age-matched (CA) controls. We focused on the syllable’s role and on the impact of French linguistic features. In Experiment 1, we assessed oral discrimination abilities of pairs of syllables that varied as a function of voicing, mode or place of articulation, or syllable structure. Results suggest that DY children underperform controls with a ‘speed-accuracy’ deficit. However, DY children exhibit some similar processing than those highlighted in controls. As in CA and RL controls, DY children have difficulties in processing two sounds that only differ in voicing, and preferentially process obstruent rather than fricative sounds, and more efficiently process CV than CCV syllables. In Experiment 2, we used a modified version of the Colé, Magnan, and Grainger's (Applied Psycholinguistics 20:507–532, 1999) paradigm. Results show that DY children underperform CA controls but outperform RL controls. However, as in CA and RL controls, data reveal that DY children are able to use phonological procedures influenced by initial syllable frequency. Thus, DY children process syllabically high-frequency syllables but phonemically process low-frequency syllables. They also exhibit lexical and syllable frequency effects. Consequently, results provide evidence that DY children performances can be accounted for by laborious phonological syllable-based procedures and also degraded phonological representations.

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Notes

  1. We acknowledge that we did analogies between the categorical perception task and the oral discrimination task to hypothesize, although both tasks were quite different in their courses and in their materials.

  2. As the Group factor has never interacted with one of the within-subject factors (as well in F1 as in F2 analyses), whether in the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses comparison or separately in the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses comparison, we did not present two-by-two ANOVAs (i.e., DY children vs. RL and then, CA controls). Nevertheless, to ensure our results, we carried out these two-by-two ANOVAs (not described in this article), which supported our conclusions.

  3. The syllable and word frequency extracted from Manulex (Lété et al., 2004) and Manulex-infra (Peereman et al., 2007) databases were the occurrences per million from first to fifth grade (i.e., U1-to-U5 column).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Sonia Krifi and Vania Herbillon (neuropsychologists) and Évelyne Veuillet for providing us assistance and the Alouette test scores for dyslexic children. We are grateful to head teachers, teachers, and children who took part in this study. We also thank Laëtitia Blanc for her help in collecting data. Support for this research was partly provided by the French Ministry for Research via a PhD Grant awarded to Norbert Maïonchi-Pino.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Lumière Lyon 2/Université de Lyon, Lyon, France

    Norbert Maïonchi-Pino, Annie Magnan & Jean Écalle

  2. Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, ÉMC, 5, avenue Pierre Mendès-France, 69500, Bron, France

    Norbert Maïonchi-Pino, Annie Magnan & Jean Écalle

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  1. Norbert Maïonchi-Pino
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  2. Annie Magnan
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Correspondence to Norbert Maïonchi-Pino, Annie Magnan or Jean Écalle.

Appendices

Appendix A

Table 7 Material used in Experiment 1 for identical condition
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Table 8 Material used in Experiment 1 for different condition
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Appendix B

Table 9 Material used in Experiment 2
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Maïonchi-Pino, N., Magnan, A. & Écalle, J. The nature of the phonological processing in French dyslexic children: evidence for the phonological syllable and linguistic features' role in silent reading and speech discrimination. Ann. of Dyslexia 60, 123–150 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-010-0036-7

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