Prosodic distinctive features in dyslexic children
Résumé
Dyslexia is widely associated to a massive phonological awareness deficit. Recently, an increasing number of studies demonstrated the relationship between prosody and reading and, more specifically, the potential key role of suprasegmental phonology in the healthy development of phonological representations. The aim of this study is to explore part of prosodic features in dyslexics (Dys) and normal developing children (Ndc) in reading and narration tasks, in French. We examined inter-pausal units (IPUs) duration and instantaneous variations of F0. For IPUs duration, results showed a group effect in reading task and a task effect in Ndc group, in agreement with study on pauses and articulatory rate. For instantaneous variation of F0, measures revealed lower modulation for Dys group in reading task and for narration in Ndc group. Data analysis confirmed relationship between reading ability and prosody. We interpreted these results as an outward sign of cognitive effort in a reading and a word generation task.