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

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Phonemic deficits are established predictors of reading difficulties.
• Tallal's hypothesis links phonemic deficits to auditory temporal processing deficits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the plausibility of the hypothesis that temporal processing deficits underlie phonemic deficits in dyslexia.
• To explore the relationship between temporal processing and reading disabilities.

Main Methods:

• Review of literature on sequential (temporal) processing.
• Examination of evidence from stimulus individuation and temporal order judgment tasks.
• Analysis of morphological studies.

Main Results:

• Dyslexics show deficits in stimulus individuation (e.g., gap detection) and temporal order judgments across auditory and visual modalities.
• Evidence supports a link between temporal processing deficits and reading disabilities.
• Morphological studies provide converging evidence.

Conclusions:

• A temporal processing deficit is present in many developmental dyslexics.
• This deficit may be the root cause of some reading disabilities.
• Further research is needed to confirm the causal link.