Auditory and motor rhythm awareness in adults with dyslexia

Children with developmental dyslexia appear to be insensitive to basic auditory cues to speech rhythm and stress. For example, they experience difficulties in processing duration and amplitude envelope onset cues. Here we explored the sensitivity of adults with developmental dyslexia to the same cues. In addition, relations with expressive and receptive rhythm tasks, such as tempi recognition and manual tapping to a metronome, were explored. Our goal was to investigate whether the auditory deficits seen in dyslexia are specific to cues to speech rhythm and stress, or are part of a wider rhythmic awareness problem. A group of 19 undergraduate students with dyslexia were compared with 20 age- and ability-matched controls. The findings confirmed a relationship between auditory rhythm sensitivity and literacy in adults, as well as showing an association with metronome inter-tap-interval variability.