Prosody and developmental dyslexia: a meta-analysis

Mundy, IR and Wood, C ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1492-6501, 2024. Prosody and developmental dyslexia: a meta-analysis. Reading and Writing. ISSN 0922-4777

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Abstract

Purpose: A substantial body of research, including narrative and meta-analytic reviews, has established concurrent and longitudinal relationships between sensitivity to speech prosody and reading ability. This study synthesised research findings pertaining to a possible impairment of prosodic skills in dyslexia.

Method: Three-level meta-analysis was utilised to synthesise 124 effect sizes from 37 studies comprising data from 1771 participants (mean age =13.7 years, range: 6–26).

Results: A moderate-to-large impairment of prosodic competence relative to chronological-age-controls was identified. The effect emerged consistently across languages and different types of prosodic competence task, individual studies were adequately powered to detect effects of this magnitude, and there was no evidence of publication bias. There was no significant impairment relative to reading-age-controls. There was also no impairment for tasks tapping the implicit processing and mental representation of prosody. However, studies in the literature are not sufficiently powered to detect smaller differences between reading groups.

Conclusion: The evidence is consistent with a developmental delay in prosodic competence in dyslexia. One interpretation of this is that prosodic competence is in some way dependent on reading experience. Findings also support theoretical models of dyslexia which emphasise explicit processing of phonology, rather than impaired phonological representations or underlying sensory difficulties. However, fully addressing questions of causality will require additional studies that incorporate reading-age-controls and possess sufficient statistical power to detect small effects.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Reading and Writing
Creators:	Mundy, I.R. and Wood, C.
Publisher:	Springer Verlag
Date:	14 November 2024
ISSN:	0922-4777
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s11145-024-10610-y DOI 2275662 Other
Rights:	This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11145-024-10610-y
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	19 Nov 2024 09:40
Last Modified:	25 Nov 2024 08:48
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52606

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