Auditory statistical learning and tone perception of Hong Kong children with developmental dyslexia

Abstract

This study examined whether Cantonese children with developmental dyslexia (DD) exhibit impairment in lexical tone perception, auditory linguistic and non-linguistic statistical learning (SL). Three groups of participants: (1) 15 children with DD in Primary four, (2) 16 age-matched controls in Primary four, and (3) 15 reading-level-matched controls in Primary three, were tested on tone identification with noise level of -10 dB SNR, tone discrimination, auditory linguistic and non-linguistic statistical learning. It was found that children with DD demonstrated impaired tone identification with noise of -10 dB SNR compared to typically-developing children; and worse tone discrimination than age-matched controls. Children with DD also performed worse in auditory linguistic SL than typically-developing children, but not in non-linguistic SL. These findings suggest that children with DD have suprasegmental phonological deficits in tone perception and auditory linguistic SL deficits. Moreover, correlations were also found among tone perception, auditory linguistic SL, lexical and literacy development, suggesting deficits in tone perception and auditory SL may be one of the possible causes for poor lexical and literacy development.