Usefulness of low redundancy speech tests with dyslexic children

Abstract

Abstract Objectives: Developmental dyslexia in children can affect auditory and linguistic skills. Due to the impairment of hearing discrimination, attention, memory and perception, dyslexia causes the inability to process and interpret linguistic and verbal information effectively. Standard audiological examination is much less useful than low redundancy speech tests and electro-physiological examination, which are the only objective measures of central auditory processing. The aim of the study was to assess the usefulness of low redundancy speech tests and dichotic tests in the diagnosis of developmental dyslexia in children. Methods: Ten children aged 7–15 years were tested by a dichotic numeral test, a dichotic verbal minimal-pair test, and a Calearo test. Results: The experiments demonstrated that the dyslectic group achieved worse results in the above tests compared to the control group. This suggests information exchange disorders between the hemispheres, a lack of synchronization of acoustic perception in dichotic tests, and damage of the structures responsible for central auditory processing in the dominating hemisphere. Conclusions: The results of our study confirm the existence of information exchange disorders between the hemispheres and the lack of synchronization of acoustic perception in dichotic tests, where the signal is presented to both ears simultaneously. Much worse results in low redundancy tests reveal, moreover, damage of the structures responsible for central auditory processing in the dominating hemisphere. Altogether, this research has proved the usefulness of the conducted tests in the diagnostics of central auditory processing disorders in patients with dyslexia.