Overnight consolidation of speech sounds predicts decoding ability in skilled adult readers

Phonological representations are important for reading. In the current work, we examine the relationship between speech-perceptual memory encoding and consolidation to reading ability in skilled adult readers.

Seventy-three young adults (age 18-24) were first tested in their word and nonword reading ability, and then trained in the late evening to identify an unfamiliar speech sound contrast (Hindi retroflex-dental). Participants were assessed in their ability to perceive the target contrast immediately before training, after training, and 12 hours later.

While perceptual performance on the target at any time point was unassociated with reading ability, overnight changes to the post-training perceptual ability over the 12-hour delay was significantly associated with nonword reading (i.e. decoding) ability, but not real-word reading.

These results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that individual differences in memory processes that update phonological representations following acoustic-phonetic exposure relate to decoding performance, including in adulthood.