The unique impact of temporal processing on reading in dyslexia with a deficit in rapid automatic naming

In order to figure out the non-overlap between the dyslexic children with a deficit in rapid automatic naming (RAN) (D_R) and the ones with deficits in RAN and phonological awareness (PA) (D_RP) from a perspective of temporal processing, 27 D_R, 47 D_RP, and 40 typically developing children (TD) aged 7-14 were recruited in Taiwan. All participants were asked to complete tasks of non-verbal intelligence, RAN, PA, Chinese character reading, and rapid temporal processing. The rapid temporal processing was measured with an auditory temporal order judgment (ATOJ) task, in which they were asked to select which of two tones presented first with interstimulus intervals varied from 8 to 205 ms. The TD group had a better performance than two groups of dyslexia on Chinese character reading and temporal processing. However, there was no significant difference between the D_R and D_RP on these two measures. The results of multiple regressions showed that with control of age, non-verbal intelligence, RAN and PA, the Group (2%, p = .01) and ATOJ (2%, p = .003) accounted for unique variances in Chinese character reading for all groups. Moreover, the interaction between ATOJ and D_R was significant (p < .001), but not the interactions of ATOJ with the other two groups (ps > .05). The performance of ATOJ further accounted for unique variance in Chinese character reading for the participants in the D_R group (5%, p < .001), which supported a unique impact of temporal processing on dyslexic children with a deficit in RAN. Copyright © 2020 ARWA.