Speech Recognition in Noise by Children with and without Dyslexia: How is it Related to Reading?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2018.04.014Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

Developmental dyslexia is commonly viewed as a phonological deficit that makes it difficult to decode written language. But children with dyslexia typically exhibit other problems, as well, including poor speech recognition in noise. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the speech-in-noise problems of children with dyslexia are related to their reading problems, and if so, if a common underlying factor might explain both. The specific hypothesis examined was that a spectral processing disorder results in these children receiving smeared signals, which could explain both the diminished sensitivity to phonological structure – leading to reading problems – and the speech recognition in noise difficulties. The alternative hypothesis tested in this study was that children with dyslexia simply have broadly based language deficits.

Participants

Ninety-seven children between the ages of 7 years; 10 months and 12 years; 9 months participated: 46 with dyslexia and 51 without dyslexia.

Methods

Children were tested on two dependent measures: word reading and recognition in noise with two types of sentence materials: as unprocessed (UP) signals, and as spectrally smeared (SM) signals. Data were collected for four predictor variables: phonological awareness, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, and digit span.

Results

Children with dyslexia showed deficits on both dependent and all predictor variables. Their scores for speech recognition in noise were poorer than those of children without dyslexia for both the UP and SM signals, but by equivalent amounts across signal conditions indicating that they were not disproportionately hindered by spectral distortion. Correlation analyses on scores from children with dyslexia showed that reading ability and speech-in-noise recognition were only mildly correlated, and each skill was related to different underlying abilities.

Conclusions

No substantial evidence was found to support the suggestion that the reading and speech recognition in noise problems of children with dyslexia arise from a single factor that could be defined as a spectral processing disorder. The reading and speech recognition in noise deficits of these children appeared to be largely independent.

Section snippets

What this paper adds?

Two clear trends are apparent across research studies into developmental dyslexia: (1) Children with dyslexia display a variety of deficits beyond just reading problems; and (2) These children appear to have subtle and as-yet unspecified perceptual processing problems that may account for their reading problems and other deficits. This paper adds to our understanding of these issues by examining reading skill and one other deficit commonly found for children with dyslexia: problems recognizing

Participants

Data are presented for 97 children between the ages of 7 years; 10 months and 12 years; 9 months: 46 with diagnoses of dyslexia (DYS) and 51 with typical language and literacy (TYP). We selected this broad age range because we wished to examine whether the nature of deficit was different for younger children, largely in the process of learning to read, and slightly older children, who have typically mastered the skill to a great extent.

Diagnoses of dyslexia were made at either the child’s

Explaining variability in reading performance

The first objective of the statistical analyses was to assess whether phonological deficits explained reading performance for these children. Two measures of phonological awareness had been obtained: final consonant choice and pig Latin. In addition, individual means across these two measures for each child were computed (PAmean). Fig. 2 shows performance for each group on these three separate measures. Mean scores were higher for the older than for the younger children in each reading group

Discussion

The study described here was undertaken to examine potential sources of variability in two problems faced by children with dyslexia, and two hypotheses were examined. First, the possibility was considered that children with dyslexia have spectral processing deficits. If support was obtained for this hypothesis, these deficits could provide a unifying basis for two problems facing children with dyslexia: (1) poor sensitivity to phonological structure, because many acoustic cues to phoneme

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Research Grant R01 DC-000633 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the National Institutes of Health. The authors thank Taylor Wucinich, Ian Boyle, Meganne Muir, Kierstyn Tietgens, and Karen Worman for their help with subject testing and scoring. The authors thank Donal G. Sinex for his suggestions on an earlier draft.

References (84)

  • S. Nittrouer et al.

    What is the deficit in phonological processing deficits: Auditory sensitivity, masking, or category formation?

    Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

    (2011)
  • R. Port

    How are words stored in memory? Beyond phones and phonemes

    New Ideas in Psychology

    (2007)
  • S. Rosen

    Auditory processing in dyslexia and specific language impairment: Is there a deficit? What is its nature? Does it explain anything?

    Journal of Phonetics

    (2003)
  • J.H. Smith-Spark et al.

    Executive functions in adults with developmental dyslexia

    Research in Developmental Disabilities

    (2016)
  • D. Swan et al.

    Picture naming deficits in developmental dyslexia: The phonological representations hypothesis

    Brain and Language

    (1997)
  • P. Tallal

    Auditory temporal perception, phonics, and reading disabilities in children

    Brain and Language

    (1980)
  • A.C. Walley

    The role of vocabulary development in children’s spoken word recognition and segmentation ability

    Developmental Review

    (1993)
  • M.A. Akeroyd

    Are individual differences in speech reception related to individual differences in cognitive ability? A survey of twenty experimental studies with normal and hearing-impaired adults

    International Journal of Audiology

    (2008)
  • T. Baer et al.

    Effects of spectral smearing on the intelligibility of sentences in noise

    Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

    (1993)
  • A. Boothroyd et al.

    Effects of spectral smearing on phoneme and word recognition

    Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

    (1996)
  • L. Bradley et al.

    Categorizing sounds and learning to read--a causal connection

    Nature

    (1983)
  • A.R. Bradlow et al.

    Speaking clearly for children with learning disabilities: Sentence perception in noise

    Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research

    (2003)
  • A. Calcus et al.

    Peripheral and central contribution to the difficulty of speech in noise perception in dyslexic children

    Dev. Sci.

    (2017)
  • E. Carrow-Woolfolk

    Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL)

    (1999)
  • H.W. Catts

    Speech production deficits in developmental dyslexia

    Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders

    (1989)
  • J. Charles-Luce et al.

    Similarity neighbourhoods of words in young children’s lexicons

    Journal of Child Language

    (1990)
  • E. Davies-Venn et al.

    Comparing auditory filter bandwidths, spectral ripple modulation detection, spectral ripple discrimination, and speech recognition: Normal and impaired hearing

    Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

    (2015)
  • L.C. Ehri

    Reconceptualizing the development of sight word reading and its relationship to recoding

  • C. Füllgrabe et al.

    Investigating the role of working memory in speech-in-noise identification for listeners with normal hearing

    Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology

    (2016)
  • M.E. Farmer et al.

    The evidence for a temporal processing deficit linked to dyslexia: A review

    Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

    (1995)
  • C. Foo et al.

    Recognition of speech in noise with new hearing instrument compression release settings requires explicit cognitive storage and processing capacity

    Journal of the American Academy of Audiology

    (2007)
  • B. Fox et al.

    Phonemic analysis and severe reading disability in children

    Journal of Psycholinguistic Research

    (1980)
  • S. Gatehouse et al.

    Linear and nonlinear hearing aid fittings–2. Patterns of candidature

    International Journal of Audiology

    (2006)
  • S. Gordon-Salant et al.

    Temporal factors and speech recognition performance in young and elderly listeners

    Journal of Speech and Hearing Research

    (1993)
  • U. Goswami et al.

    Rise time and formant transition duration in the discrimination of speech sounds: The Ba-Wa distinction in developmental dyslexia

    Developmental Science

    (2011)
  • J. Hinshelwood

    Congenital Word-Blindness

    (1917)
  • J.M. Law et al.

    The relationship of phonological ability, speech perception, and auditory perception in adults with dyslexia

    Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

    (2014)
  • M.R. Leek et al.

    Reduced frequency selectivity and the preservation of spectral contrast in noise

    Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

    (1996)
  • B.A. Lewis et al.

    Literacy outcomes of children with early childhood speech sound disorders: Impact of endophenotypes

    Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research

    (2011)
  • I.Y. Liberman

    Segmentation of the spoken word and reading acquisition

    Bulletin of the Orton Society

    (1973)
  • G.R. Lyon et al.

    A definition of dyslexia

    Annals of Dyslexia

    (2003)
  • V.A. Mann et al.

    Phonological awareness and verbal short-term memory

    Journal of Learning Disabilities

    (1984)
  • Cited by (20)

    • Natural Language Processing for Smart Healthcare

      2024, IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering
    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text