Language Skills, but not Frequency Discrimination, Predict Reading Skills in Children At Risk of Dyslexia

This study evaluated the claim that auditory processing deficits are a cause of reading and language difficulties. We report a longitudinal study of 245 children at family risk of dyslexia, children with preschool language impairments, and controls. Children with language impairments had poorer frequency discrimination thresholds than controls at 5½ years but children at family risk of dyslexia did not. A model assessing longitudinal relationships between frequency discrimination, reading, language, and executive skills showed that frequency discrimination was predicted by executive skills but was not a longitudinal predictor of reading or language skills. Our findings contradict the hypothesis that frequency discrimination is causally related to dyslexia or language impairment, and suggest that individuals at-risk for dyslexia, or who have language impairments, may perform poorly on auditory processing tasks because of comorbid attentional difficulties