Abstract
In order to investigate the relation between reading accuracy and speech processing, 20 children from grades 2 and 3 who were skilled in reading were compared with 20 less skilled readers on a speech perception and production task. The two groups of readers were indistinguishable in their production of the two-syllable words dippy, deepy, tippy, and teepy and in their perception of the stop consonants /d/ versus /t/. Less skilled readers were significantly less accurate than the skilled readers in a vowel identification task involving the lax and tense high vowels /i/ and /i/. The error pattern for vowel identification was similar across groups, with both groups making fewer errors when short and longer segments were alternated. The results imply that vowel phonemes are less securely represented in the perceptual system of less skilled readers than are consonant phonemes. In addition, the results raise the possibility that a selective perceptual impairment underlies at least some of the phonemic awareness problems that have been associated with poor reading.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, M. 1990. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Apthorp, H. S. 1995. Phonetic coding and reading in college students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities 28(6):342–52.
Baddeley, A., and Gathercole, S. 1992. Learning to read: The role of the phonological loop. In Analytic Approaches to Human Cognition, eds. J. Alegria, D. Holender, J. J. DeMorais, and M. Radeau. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.
Berent, I., and Perfetti, C. A. 1995. A rose is a REEZ: The two-cycles model of phonology assembly in reading English. Psychological Review 102(1):146–84.
Blachman, B. A., Ball, E. W., Black, R. S., and Tangel, D. M. 1994. Kindergarten teachers develop phoneme awareness in low-income, inner-city classrooms. Does it make a difference? Reading and Writing 6(1):1–18.
Brady, S. A. 1997. Ability to encode phonological representations: An underlying difficulty of poor readers. In Foundations of Reading Acquisition and Dyslexia: Implications for Early Intervention, ed. B. Blachman. Mahwa, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Brady, S., Poggie, E., and Rapala, M. M. 1989. Speech repetition abilities in children who differ in reading skill. Language and Speech 32(2):109–22.
Brady, S., Shankweiler, D., and Mann, V. A. 1983. Speech perception and memory coding in relation to reading ability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 35:345–67.
Bruck, M. 1992. Persistence of dyslexics’ phonological awareness deficits. Developmental Psychology 28(5):874–86.
Campbell, R. and Butterworth, B. 1985. Phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia in a highly literate subject: A developmental case with associated deficits of phonemic processing and awareness. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 37A:435–75.
Catts, H. W. 1989. Defining dyslexia as a developmental language disorder. Annals of Dyslexia 39:50–64.
Catts, H. W. 1993. The relationship between speech-language impairments and reading disabilities. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36:948–58.
Chaney, C. 1992. Language development, metalinguistic skills, and print awareness in 3-year-old children. Applied Psycholinguistics 13:485–514.
Chomsky, N., and Halle, M. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York, NY: Harper and Row Publishers.
Cox, A. R. 1984. Structures and Techniques. Multisensory Teaching of Basic Language Skills. Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing Service.
Denckla, M. B., and Rudel, R. G. 1976. Rapid “automatized” naming (R. A. N.): Dyslexia differentiated from other learning disabilities. Neuropsychologia 14:471–79.
Denes, P. 1955. Effect of duration on the perception of voicing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 27:761–64.
Ehri, L. C., Wilce, L. S., and Taylor, B. B. 1987. Children’s categorization of short vowels in words and the influence of spellings. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 33:393–421.
Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Fletcher, J. M., and Lynn, A. 1996. Relation of phonological and orthographic processing to early reading: Comparing two approaches to regression-based, reading-level-match designs. Journal of Educational Psychology 88(4):1–14.
Fowler, A. E. 1991. How early phonological development might set the stage for phoneme awareness. In Phonological Processess in Literacy. A Tribute to Isabelle Y. Liberman, ed. S. A. Brady, and D. P. Shankweiler. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Frith, U. 1978. Annotation. Spelling difficulties. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 19:279–86.
Hoit, J. D., Pearl Solomon, N., and Hixon, T. J. 1993. Effect of lung volume on voice onset time (VOT). Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 36:516–21.
Klatt, D. H. 1975. Voice onset time, frication, and aspiration in word initial consonant clusters. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 18:686–706.
Kuhl, P. K. 1991. Human adults and human infants show a “perceptual magnet effect” for the prototypes of speech categories, monkeys do not. Perception & Psychophysics 50(2):93–107.
Kuhl, P. K, Williams, K., Lacerda, F., Stevens, K., and Lindblom, B. 1992. Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age. Science 255:606–8.
Landerl, K., Frith, U., and Wimmer, H. 1996. Intrusion of orthographic knowledge on phonemic awareness: Strong in normal readers, weak in dyslexic readers. Applied Psycholinguistics 17:1–14.
Lieberman, P. 1985. On the evolution of human syntactic ability. Its pre-adaptive bases-motor control and speech. Journal of Human Evolution 14:657–66.
Lieberman, P., Meskill, R. H., Chatillon, M., and Schupack, H. 1985. Phonetic speech perception deficits in dyslexia. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 28:480–86.
Locke, J. L. 1997. A theory of neurolinguistic development. Brain and Language 58:265–326.
Locke, P. 1967. Ealing course in Spanish. London: Longman.
Lundberg, I., Olofsson, A., and Wall, S. 1980. Reading and spelling skills in the first school years, predicted from phonemic awareness skills in kindergarten. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 21:159–73.
Lyon, G. R. 1995. Toward a definition of dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia 45:3–27.
Macken, M. A., and Barton, D. 1980. A longitudinal study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in American English word-initial stops, as measured by voice-onset time. Journal of Child Language 7:41–47.
Mehler, J., and Christophe, A. 1994. Language in the infant’s mind. Philosophical Trans. of the Royal Society of London B 346:13–20.
Metsala, J. L. 1997. Spoken word recognition in reading disabled children. Journal of Educational Psychology 89:159–69.
Micro Speech Lab software (Version 3.0, Software Research Corporation)
Mody, M., Studdert-Kennedy, M., and Brady, S. in press. Speech perception deficits in poor readers: Auditory processing or phonological coding? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 64:
Ohman, S. E. G. 1966. Coarticulation in VCV utterances: Spectographic measurements. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 39:151–68.
Piaget, J., and Inhelder, B. 1969. The Psychology of the Child. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Port, R. F., and Dalby, J. 1982. Consonant/vowel ratio as a cue for voicing in English. Perception & Psychophysics 32:141–52.
Rack, J. P., Snowling, M. J., and Olson, R. K. 1992. The nonword reading deficit in developmental dyslexia: A review. Reading Research Quarterly 27(1):29–53.
Rayner, K., Sereno, S. C., Lesch, M. F., and Pollatsek, A. 1995. Phonological codes are automatically activated during reading: Evidence from an eye movement priming paradigm. Psychological Science 6(1):26–32.
Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., Aslin, R. N., Tunick, R. A., and Barrueco, S. 1997. Incidental language learning: Listening (and learning) out of the corner of your ear. Psychological Science 8(2):101–5.
Schouten, M. E. H., and van Hessen, A. J. 1992. Modeling phoneme perception. I: Categorical perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 92(4):1841–55.
Snowling, M. 1983. The comparison of acquired and developmental disorders of reading. A discussion. Cognition 14:105–18.
SPSS Inc. SPSS for Windows. Base system user’s guide. Release 6.1. Chicago, IL.
Steffens, M. L., Eilers, R. E., Gross-Glenn, K., and Jallad, B. 1992. Speech perception in adult subjects with familial dyslexia. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 35:192–200.
Studdert-Kennedy, M., and Mody, M. 1995. Auditory temporal perception deficits in the reading-impaired: A critical review of the evidence. Psychonomic Bulletin 2:508–14.
Tallal, P., Miller, S., Bedi, G., Byma, G., Wang, X., Nagarajan, S., Schreiner, C., Jenkins, W., and Merzenich, M. 1996. Language comprehension in language-learning impaired children improved with acoustically modified speech. Science 271:81–84.
Tallal, P., Sainburg, R. L., and Jernigan, T. 1991. The neuropathology of developmental dysphasia: Behavioral, morphological, and physiological evidence for a pervasive temporal processing disorder. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3:363–77.
Tyler, A. A., and Edwards, M. L. 1993. Lexical acquisition and acquisition of initial voiceless stops. Journal of Child Language 20:253–73.
Wagner, R. K., and Torgesen, J. K. 1987. The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquistion of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin 101:192–212.
Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., and Rashotte, C. A. 1994. Development of reading-related phonological processing abilities: New evidence of bidirectional causality from a latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology 30(1):73–87.
Werker, J. F. and Polka, L. 1993. The ontogeny and developmental significance of language-specific phonetic perception. In Developmental Neurocognition: Speech and Face Processing in the First Year of Life, eds. B. de Boysson-Bardies et al. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Werker, J. F. and Tees, R. C. 1984. Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development 7:49–63.
Wolf, M., Pfeil, C., Lotz, R., and Biddle, K. 1994. Towards a more universal understanding of the developmental dyslexias: The contribution of orthographic factors. In The Varieties of Orthographic Knowledge I: Theoretical and Developmental Issues, ed. V. W. Berninger. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Woodcock, R. W., and Johnson, M. B. 1989. Woodcock-Johnson Psycho Educational Battery-Revised. Allen, TX: DLM.
Zlatin, M. A. 1974. Voicing contrast: perceptual and productive voice onset time characteristics of adults. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 56(3):981–94.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Post, Y.V., Foorman, B.R. & Hiscock, M. Speech perception and speech production as indicators of reading difficulty. Ann. of Dyslexia 47, 1–27 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-997-0018-6
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-997-0018-6