Our study funded by the Fondation Botnar has recently published new findings.

A new publication from the project funded by the Fondation Botnar has published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal, July 2024.

When children learn to speak, they learn the special “sound shape” of words in their language. For example, in English they learn that ‘broom’ and ‘bread’ begin in the same way. They come to be aware that words are made up of syllables, such as bu-tter-fly (3 syllables).  In reading research this knowledge is referred to as phonological awareness. For the last 30 years individual differences in phonological awareness have been found to be a significant predictor of a child’s progress in learning to read.  One specific aspect of a sound’s shape is its onset, that is, the way it starts.  Take for example the words ‘ball’ and ‘wall’. Starting from silence, over a very short period in the order of 50 ms, the sound shape’s loudness (amplitude) rises.  It can rise relatively slowly as in ‘wall’ or more abruptly as in ‘ball’.  In this example, the word that is perceived by the child is dependent on the rate at which the onset rises. At middle speeds the word may become ambiguous between ball/wall.  More recently, research has suggested that sensitivity to the difference in the rise time (RT) is worse in children with dyslexia. 

Studies looking at sensitivity to RT have included different languages and have used a range of different age groups and different non-speech sound types, all of which may or may not have influenced their findings.  The aim of our study was to investigate systematically the relationship between sensitivity to RT and phonological awareness and literacy development. We compared a group of children with dyslexia with a group of children of the same age that were typically developing readers.  Four different sound types were used, and we studied the same children over a 5-year period.

We found the group with dyslexia were consistently worse at detecting the difference in RT for all the sound types used.  Sensitivity to RT varied with sound type as the group age progressed. RT sensitivity was significantly related to phonological awareness, and subsequent literacy.

Read the article here.