The article “Perceptual Discrimination of Speech Sounds in Developmental Dyslexia” by Serniclaes, Sprenger-Charolles, Carre and Demonet discusses the question of relationship between categorical perception and dyslexia. The authors focus on the nature of the categorization deficit, trying to find out whether it is speech specific or not, comparing the discrimination responses of dyslexic children and those of typical readers. The authors claim that it is steel an open question whether this deficit is only affecting the perception of speech sounds or whether it is generally specific to auditory function. What the study proposes is that categorical deficit in dyslexic children is principally a result of “an increased perceptibility of within-category differences” and that its nature does contain a speech specific component.

The importance of the claims provided by the article is that the authors’ studies and findings can influence a learning and re-education process greatly in the future. Nowadays there is a growing concern about people suffering from dyslexia, which is a condition that makes it difficult for someone to read and spell. Dyslexia actually has a great impact on education, resulting in specific educational consequences and affecting some 10% of the population. The significance of Serniclaes’, Sprenger-Charolles’, Carre’s and Demonet’s study lays in the deep theoretical influence on the functional link between reading deficit and perceptual deficiency, as well as in practical effectiveness it may have for treatment and rehabilitation methods.

The authors state that pursuing the aim of their study, which is, as mentioned before, to gather further proof of the connection between categorical perception and dyslexia and the nature of the deficit in categorization, they performed an experiment. It implied the comparison of dyslexic children’s discrimination responses and typical reader controls to sinewave analogues of speech sounds. On the basis of the assumption that “any difference that shows up in these conditions will necessarily arise from a change in perceptual processing, thereby excluding classical alternative interpretations in terms of concomitant acoustical differences between speech and nonspeech stimuli” and acquired results the authors conclude that there are both resemblances and dissimilarities in the ways of speech sounds discrimination of dyslexic and average readers.

The scientists also make a provisional conclusion, mentioning the fact of lack of firm evidence to support the idea, that dyslexic children experience double deficit in categorical perception, both an auditory and speech specific one.  The authors refer to Nicolson & Fawcett study that resulted in the same conclusion gained in reaction time investigation (1994).

There is another consequence of present study which proposes that, when listening to speech, children suffering from dyslexia do not at the same time suffer from a deficit in auditory acuity or in perceptual acuity. The authors also draw a conclusion that, according to acquired results “the problem with dyslexia is seemingly not in the processing of rapid incoming sensory information but in the construction of phonemic categories”. This claim may have some influence on the methods of rehabilitation that are performed with the use of slowed-down speech which imply prolonging formant transitions and are based on the theory related to the processing of brief acoustic events.