Deficient implicit phonological representations in children with dyslexia

This study tested the segmentation hypothesis of dyslexia by measuring implicit phonological representations in reading-disabled 11- to 13-year-olds. Implicit measures included lexical gating, priming, and syllable similarity tasks designed to reduce metalinguistic demands. Children with dyslexia performed consistently worse than CA and RA controls when more segmental representations were required across all three tasks. Implicit phonological representations were correlated with measures of speech perception, phoneme awareness, and phonological short-term memory, but not rapid automatized naming, and accounted for unique variance in predicting reading ability. Results provide strong support for less mature implicit phonological representations in children with dyslexia.