If one answers the phone and hear "Hello, how are you?", It is likely that these words are sufficient to recognize the speaker ... unless you have dyslexia.

In a surprising discovery, researchers found that adults with this condition that affects reading also struggle to recognize voices.

The study is not just a curiosity. Fits research to discover the basics of literacy and how they can be damaged. The ultimate goal: identify children at risk before they open their first books, rather than when they are diagnosed with dyslexia in second grade and have great difficulty reading.

"Everyone is interested in understanding the roots of dyslexia, to intervene early and treat it," says cognitive neuroscientist John Gabrieli, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lead author of the study published last week in the journal Science.

It is thought that dyslexia affects between 8 and 15% of Americans, causing problems with reading and writing. Not a problem of intelligence or vision, but is based on an understanding of language. The brain has problems with what is known as the "phonological" the ability to distinguish and manipulate sounds like "ba" and "pa", which ultimately must be linked to letters and words.

A graduate student in Gabrieli's lab was asked whether dyslexia also affect voice recognition. After all, the subtle differences in pronunciation help distinguish people.

How to examine the problem? Previous studies have shown that it is easier to recognize voices if they speak your own language. Thus, the researchers recruited Anglophone university students, half of those with dyslexia. Participants in the study looked at characters in cartoon-like a clown, a mechanic, a football-speak English or Chinese, to become familiar with the sound of their voices.

They were then asked to identify correctly each voice with his character. Volunteers identified well the characters speaking Chinese only half of the time, regardless of whether they had dyslexia. But when they heard the characters Anglophones, volunteers with dyslexia still correctly answered only half of the time, while non-dyslexics did in 70% of the time.

This provides new evidence of the strong link between dyslexia and phonological problems. Gabrieli said he plans to conduct the study with children of five years.

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Tags : recognizing, voices, dyslexia, discovery, researchers, adults, study, journal Science
Category : Health

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