Auditory temporal processing of linguistic and non linguistic stimuli in children with reading difficulties

This study examines whether children with reading disabilities have a temporal processing deficit and whether this deficit is specific to linguistic processing. To resolve this issue, we use the same paradigm to evaluate linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli that are controlled in terms of their complexity. Order judgment tasks were administered in 10 children without reading difficulties and 11 with reading difficulties matched in age (8-9 years). The linguistic task contrasts the voiceless-voiced feature /pa/-/ba/ and the non-linguistic task contrast a mouse squeak (470 Hz) and a duck quack (260 Hz). Results showed that the temporal processing deficit is specific to the linguistic stimuli. The findings are discussed in terms of temporal processing of language related to reading.