PURPOSE: To analyze the temporal prosodic aspect in loud reading of students with and without dyslexia from the phonetic point of view through acoustic and perceptual evaluation, in order to identify differences in performance between the two types of readers that may point to particular characteristics of dyslexia. METHODS: Forty students from 3rd to 5th grades with ages ranging from nine to 14 years, ten dyslexic (clinical group) and 30 without any complaints of learning deficits (non-clinical group) were recorded during loud reading of a text. Data were perceptually and acoustically analyzed using the software WinPitch. The following measures were taken: pause duration and location, total speaking time, speaking rate, articulation time, and articulation rate. RESULTS: In comparison to the non-clinical group, the clinical group had a higher number of and longer pauses; their speaking and articulation rates indicated, respectively, a lower reading speed and slowness in the production of each articulatory gesture. CONCLUSION: The characteristics identified in reading processing by dyslexic children make the prosodic organization in text reading difficult.
Dyslexia; Reading; Velocity measurement; Learning; Acoustics
