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Updated: Jan 28, 2026

Assessing Dyslexia at Six Year of Age
Published on: May 1, 2020
Comorbidity and cognitive overlap between developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia
Manon Couvignou1,2,3, Isabelle Peretz2, Franck Ramus3
1a Unité de Recherche en Neurosciences Cognitives, Center for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences, Faculté des Sciences Psychologiques et de l'Éducation , Université Libre de Bruxelles , Brussels , Belgium.
Abstract:
This study investigated whether there is a co-occurrence between developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia in adults. First, a database of online musical tests on 18,000 participants was analysed. Self-reported dyslexic participants performed significantly lower on melodic skills than matched controls, suggesting a possible link between reading and musical disorders. In order to test this relationship more directly, we evaluated 20 participants diagnosed with dyslexia, 16 participants diagnosed with amusia, and their matched controls, with a whole battery of literacy (reading, fluency, spelling), phonological (verbal working memory, phonological awareness) and musical tests (melody, rhythm and metre perception, incidental memory). Amusia was diagnosed in six (30%) dyslexic participants and reading difficulties were found in four (25%) amusic participants. Thus, the results point to a moderate comorbidity between amusia and dyslexia. Further research will be needed to determine what factors at the neural and/or cognitive levels are responsible for this co-occurrence.
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