Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine whether developmental dyslexia (DD) is characterized by deficiencies in speech sensory and motor feedforward and feedback mechanisms, which are involved in the modulation of phonological representations.

Method

A total of 42 adult native speakers of Dutch (22 adults with DD; 20 participants who were typically reading controls) were asked to produce /bep/ while the first formant (F1) of the /e/ was not altered (baseline), increased (ramp), held at maximal perturbation (hold), and not altered again (after-effect). The F1 of the produced utterance was measured for each trial and used for statistical analyses. The measured F1s produced during each phase were entered in a linear mixed-effects model.

Results

Participants with DD adapted more strongly during the ramp phase and returned to baseline to a lesser extent when feedback was back to normal (after-effect phase) when compared with the typically reading group. In this study, a faster deviation from baseline during the ramp phase, a stronger adaptation response during the hold phase, and a slower return to baseline during the after-effect phase were associated with poorer reading and phonological abilities.

Conclusion

The data of the current study are consistent with the notion that the phonological deficit in DD is associated with a weaker sensorimotor magnet for phonological representations.