title: Are syllabification and resyllabification strategies phonotactically directed in French children with dyslexia? A preliminary report.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In this study, the authors queried whether French-speaking children with dyslexia were sensitive to consonant sonority and position within syllable boundaries to influence a phonological syllable-based segmentation in silent reading.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants included 15 French-speaking children with dyslexia, compared with 30 chronological age-matched and reading level-matched controls. Children were tested with an audiovisual recognition task. A target pseudoword (TOLPUDE) was simultaneously presented visually and auditorily and then was compared with a printed test pseudoword that either was identical or differed after the coda deletion (TOPUDE) or the onset deletion (TOLUDE). The intervocalic consonant sequences had either a sonorant coda-sonorant onset (TOR.LADE), sonorant coda-obstruent onset (TOL.PUDE), obstruent coda-sonorant onset (DOT.LIRE), or obstruent coda-obstruent onset (BIC.TADE) sonority profile.
  
  
  RESULTS
  All children processed identity better than they processed deletion, especially with the optimal sonorant coda-obstruent onset sonority profile. However, children preserved syllabification (coda deletion; TO.PUDE) rather than resyllabification (onset deletion; TO.LUDE) with intervocalic consonant sequence reductions, especially when sonorant codas were deleted but the optimal intersyllable contact was respected.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  It was surprising to find that although children with dyslexia generally exhibit phonological and acoustic-phonetic impairments (voicing), they showed sensitivity to the optimal sonority profile and a preference for preserved syllabification. The authors proposed a sonority-modulated explanation to account for phonological syllable-based processing. Educational implications are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Université Lyon 2, Lyon, France. mpinonor@gmail.com
authors.forename: Norbert
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Maïonchi-Pino
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: de Cara
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ecalle
authors.forename: Annie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Magnan
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics