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Dyslexia has been associated with a problem in visual–audio integration mechanisms. Here, we investigate for the first time the contribution of unisensory cues on multisensory audio and visual integration in 32 dyslexic children by modelling results using the Bayesian approach. Non‐linguistic stimuli were used. Children performed a temporal task: they had to report whether the middle of three stimuli was closer in time to the first one or to the last one presented. Children with dyslexia, compared with typical children, exhibited poorer unimodal thresholds, requiring greater temporal distance between items for correct judgements, while multisensory thresholds were well predicted by the Bayesian model. This result suggests that the multisensory deficit in dyslexia is due to impaired audio and visual inputs rather than impaired multisensory processing per se. We also observed that poorer temporal skills correlated with lower reading skills in dyslexic children, suggesting that this temporal capability can be linked to reading abilities., Multisensory audio visual processing in dyslexia is due to impaired audio and visual inputs rather than impaired multisensory processing per se.

Speech perception deficits are commonly reported in dyslexia but longitudinal evidence that poor speech perception compromises learning to read is scant. We assessed the hypothesis that phonological skills, specifically phoneme awareness and RAN, mediate the relationship between speech perception and reading. We assessed longitudinal predictive relationships between categorical speech perception, phoneme awareness, RAN, language, attention and reading at ages 5½ and 6½ years in 237 children many of whom were at high risk of reading difficulties. Speech perception at 5½ years correlated with language, attention, phoneme awareness and RAN concurrently and was a predictor of reading at 6½ years. There was no significant indirect effect of speech perception on reading via phoneme awareness, suggesting that its effects are separable from those of phoneme awareness. Children classified with dyslexia at 8 years had poorer speech perception than age‐controls at 5½ years and children with language disorders (with or without dyslexia) had more severe difficulties with both speech perception and attention control. Categorical speech perception tasks tap factors extraneous to perception, including decision‐making skills. Further longitudinal studies are needed to unravel the complex relationships between categorical speech perception tasks and measures of reading and language and attention. Funding Information: Wellcome Trust. Grant Number: WT082032MA

Multisensory information has been shown to modulate attention in infants and facilitate learning in\ud adults, by enhancing the amodal properties of a stimulus. However, it remains unclear whether this\ud translates to learning in a multisensory environment across middle childhood, and particularly in the\ud case of incidental learning. One hundred and eighty-one children aged between 6 and 10 years\ud participated in this study using a novel Multisensory Attention Learning Task (MALT). Participants\ud were asked to respond to the presence of a target stimulus whilst ignoring distractors. Correct target\ud selection resulted in the movement of the target exemplar to either the upper left or right screen\ud quadrant, according to category membership. Category membership was defined either by visual-only,\ud auditory-only or multisensory information. As early as 6 years of age, children demonstrated greater\ud performance on the incidental categorization task following exposure to multisensory audiovisual\ud cues compared to unisensory information. These findings provide important insight into the use of\ud multisensory information in learning, and particularly on incidental category learning. Implications\ud for the deployment of multisensory learning tasks within education across development will be\ud discussed.