Spectrotemporal Modulation Sensitivity in Developmental Dyslexia
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2018-08-01
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en
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Abstract
Previous research has suggested various general auditory processing deficits which may underlie the reduced phonological awareness in developmental dyslexia. However, despite the importance of spectrotemporal modulations for speech processing, there is no study to date which systematically examined auditory processing of the modulation components characteristic of speech in dyslexia. Thus, the present study aims to address if dyslexic and normal readers differ in perceptual sensitivity to these spectrotemporal modulations. We predict a reduced sensitivity in dyslexic readers. We used adaptive transformed up-down procedure (Chi et al., 1999; Levitt, 1971) to estimate detection thresholds of dyslexic and normal readers for different combinations of spectrotemporal modulations in dynamic ripples and AM broadband noises. Contrary to our prediction, multilevel modeling revealed that there was no significant group difference, indicating comparable modulation sensitivity between dyslexic and normal readers. It opposes all present hypothesized auditory deficits. Moreover, we found a significant interaction between the effects of temporal modulations and those of spectral modulations. It implies a dependency of these two processing mechanisms. Future research is needed to further inspect the auditory processing of speech as well as other natural sounds in dyslexia.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen