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To date, the nature of the phonological deficit in developmental dyslexia is still debated. We concur with possible impairments in the representations of the universal phonological constraints that universally govern how phonemes co-occur as a source of this deficit. We were interested in whether-and how-dyslexic children have sensitivity to sonority-related markedness constraints. We tested 10 French dyslexic children compared with 20 typically developing chronological age-matched and reading level-matched controls. All were tested with two aurally administered syllable counting tasks that manipulated well-formedness of unattested consonant clusters, as determined by universal phonological sonority-related markedness constraints (onset clusters in Experiment 1; intervocalic clusters in Experiment 2). Surprisingly, dyslexic children's response patterns were similar to those in both control groups; as universal phonological sonority-related markedness increased, dyslexic children increasingly perceptually confused and phonologically repaired clusters with an illusory epenthetic vowel (e.g., /Bebal/). Although dyslexic children were systematically slower, like both control groups, they were influenced by universal sonority-related markedness constraints and hierarchically ranked constraints specific to French over evident acoustic-phonetic contrasts or sonority-unrelated cues. Our results are counterintuitive but innovative and compete to question an impaired universal phonological grammar because dyslexic children were found to have normal universal phonological constraints and were skilled to restore phonotactically legal syllable structures with a language-specific illusory epenthetic vowel (i.e., /e/-like vowel). We discuss them regarding active phonological decoding and recoding processes within the framework of the optimality theory. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)

This paper aims to investigate whether--and how--consonant sonority (obstruent vs. sonorant) and status (coda vs. onset) within syllable boundaries modulate the syllable-based segmentation strategies. Here, it is questioned whether French dyslexic children, who experience acoustic-phonetic (i.e., voicing) and phonological impairments, are sensitive to an optimal "sonorant coda-obstruent onset" sonority profile as a cue for a syllable-based segmentation. To examine these questions, we used a modified version of the illusory conjunction paradigm with French dyslexic children compared with both chronological age-matched and reading level-matched controls. Our results first showed that the syllable-based segmentation is developmentally constrained in visual identification: in normally reading children, it appears to progressively increase as reading skills increase. However, surprisingly, our results also showed that dyslexic children were able to use syllable-sized units. Then, data highlighted that a syllable-based segmentation in visual identification basically relies on an optimal "sonorant coda-obstruent onset" sonority profile rather than on phonological and orthographic statistical properties in normally reading children as well as, surprisingly, in dyslexic children. Our results are discussed to support a sonority-modulated prelexical role of syllable-sized units in visual identification in French, even in dyslexic children who exhibited a developmentally delayed profile. We argue that dyslexic children have deficits in online phonetic-phonological processing rather than degraded or underspecified phonetic-phonological representations. (Contains 2 figures and 4 tables.)

This study investigated the status of phonological representations in French dyslexic children (DY) compared with reading level- (RL) and chronological age-matched (CA) controls. We focused on the syllable's role and on the impact of French linguistic features. In Experiment 1, we assessed oral discrimination abilities of pairs of syllables that varied as a function of voicing, mode or place of articulation, or syllable structure. Results suggest that DY children underperform controls with a "speed-accuracy" deficit. However, DY children exhibit some similar processing than those highlighted in controls. As in CA and RL controls, DY children have difficulties in processing two sounds that only differ in voicing, and preferentially process obstruent rather than fricative sounds, and more efficiently process CV than CCV syllables. In Experiment 2, we used a modified version of the Cole, Magnan, and Grainger's (Applied Psycholinguistics 20:507-532, 1999) paradigm. Results show that DY children underperform CA controls but outperform RL controls. However, as in CA and RL controls, data reveal that DY children are able to use phonological procedures influenced by initial syllable frequency. Thus, DY children process syllabically high-frequency syllables but phonemically process low-frequency syllables. They also exhibit lexical and syllable frequency effects. Consequently, results provide evidence that DY children performances can be accounted for by laborious phonological syllable-based procedures and also degraded phonological representations.