Lian Arzbecker

Postdoctoral researcher


Curriculum vitae


arzbecker.1 (at) osu (dot) edu | lianarzb (at) buffalo (dot) edu


Motor Speech Disorders Lab

Communicative Disorders and Sciences, University at Buffalo



Perception of indexical cues in speech by children and adults with and without dyslexia: Regional dialect and gender identification


Journal article


Ewa Jacewicz, Lian J. Arzbecker, Robert A. Fox
Dyslexia, vol. 28(1), 2022, pp. 60-78

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APA   Click to copy
Jacewicz, E., Arzbecker, L. J., & Fox, R. A. (2022). Perception of indexical cues in speech by children and adults with and without dyslexia: Regional dialect and gender identification. Dyslexia, 28(1), 60–78.


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Jacewicz, Ewa, Lian J. Arzbecker, and Robert A. Fox. “Perception of Indexical Cues in Speech by Children and Adults with and without Dyslexia: Regional Dialect and Gender Identification.” Dyslexia 28, no. 1 (2022): 60–78.


MLA   Click to copy
Jacewicz, Ewa, et al. “Perception of Indexical Cues in Speech by Children and Adults with and without Dyslexia: Regional Dialect and Gender Identification.” Dyslexia, vol. 28, no. 1, 2022, pp. 60–78.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{ewa2022a,
  title = {Perception of indexical cues in speech by children and adults with and without dyslexia: Regional dialect and gender identification},
  year = {2022},
  issue = {1},
  journal = {Dyslexia},
  pages = {60-78},
  volume = {28},
  author = {Jacewicz, Ewa and Arzbecker, Lian J. and Fox, Robert A.}
}

Abstract

Auditory research in developmental dyslexia proposes that deficient auditory processing of speech underlies difficulties with reading and spelling. Focusing predominantly on phonological processing, studies have not yet addressed the role of the speaker-related (indexical) properties of speech that enable the formation of phonological representations. Here, we assess auditory processing of indexical characteristics cueing a speaker's regional dialect and gender to determine whether dyslexia constraints recognition of dialect features and voice gender. Adults and children aged 11-14 years with dyslexia and their age-matched controls responded to 360 unique sentences extracted from spontaneous conversations of 40 speakers. In addition to the original unprocessed speech, there were two focused filtered conditions (using lowpass filtering at 400 Hz and 8-channel noise vocoding) probing listeners' responses to segmental and prosodic cues. Compared with controls, both groups with dyslexia were significantly limited in their abilities to recognize dialect features from either set of cues. The results for gender suggest that their comparatively worse gender recognition in the noise-vocoded condition was possibly related to poor temporal resolution. We propose that the deficient processing of indexical cues by individuals with dyslexia originates in peripheral auditory processes, of which impaired processing of relevant temporal cues in amplitude envelope is a likely candidate.