419014

novic and SehicJournal of Learning Disabilities

LDXXXX10.1177/0022219411419014Dura

Regular Article
Journal of Learning Disabilities

The Speed of Articulatory Movements 46(3) 278­–286

© Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0022219411419014

With Dyslexia
journaloflearningdisabilities.sagepub.com

Mirela Duranovic, PhD1 and Sabina Sehic, MA2

Abstract
A group of children with dyslexia (mean ages 9 and 14 years) was studied, together with group of children without dyslexia
matched for age. Participants were monolingual native speakers of the Bosnian language with transparent orthography. In
total, the diagnostic tests were performed with 41 children with dyslexia and 41 nondyslexic children. The participants
were asked to produce monosyllables, /pa/, /ta/, and /ka/, and the trisyllable /pataka/, as fast as possible. Analysis was
undertaken in four ways: (1) time of occlusion duration for plosives (duration of stop), (2) voice onset time for plosives,
(3) diadochokinetic rate—articulators rate measured by pronunciation of monosyllables and the trisyllable, and (4) time of
moving articulators from one gesture to another—time of interval length (from the explosion of one plosive to the start of
the explosion of another plosive). The results suggest that children with dyslexia have significant problems with the speed
of articulatory movements involved in speech production.

Keywords
dyslexia, articulation

Two current major hypotheses inform the etiology of
developmental dyslexia. One of these assumes that the
phonological processing with emphasis on the segmental
level identifies the core deficit in developmental dyslexia
and that it cannot be reduced to domain-general deficits of
temporal information processing. The other hypothesis
implies that phonological processing deficits are symptom-
atic of domain-general dysfunction and that some dyslexia
subtypes are related to domain-general deficits of temporal
information processing for auditory and visual stimuli
(Wolff, 2002).
A developmental model of reading claims that a deficit
in motor-articulatory feedback in developmental dyslexia is
connected with the development of deficient phonological
awareness and nonlexical reading. The articulatory repre-
sentation includes the oral-motor programs for the move-
ment of the articulators to produce the pseudoword’s
phonemes and consists of the somatosensory awareness of
the distinctive features within these motor programs
(Conway, 2003).
Clinical observations and experimental reports provide
evidence about speech problems in poor readers (Kamhi,
Catts, & Mauer, 1990). In the literature, articulatory disor-
ders have been associated with dyslexia (Lalain, Joly-
Pottuz, Nguyen, & Habib, 2003). Speech production skills
include articulation difficulties as well as difficulties with
the acquisition of the phonological system (De Bree, 2007).
Use of speech coding in an articulatory loop is the same in
children with and without dyslexia, but the system operates
less efficiently in children with dyslexia (Hulme &
Roodenrys, as cited in Conway, 2003).
It is widely considered that speech production difficulties
in individuals with dyslexia are a reflection of their deficits
in phonological processing (Catts, 1986; De Bree, 2007;
Griffiths & Frith, 2002). The inability to associate the posi-
tion of their articulators with speech sounds may impair the
development of phonological awareness and the ability to
convert graphemes to phonemes, which may be related to
programming or feedback deficits (Heilman, Voeller, &
Alexander, 1996).
Several researchers investigated speech production and
found that children with dyslexia exhibited residual speech
difficulties. Studies have found word-specific rather than
phoneme-specific production errors in children with dyslexia,
1
Tuzla University, Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina
2
Rehabilitation of Hearing,Voice, and Speech, Health Center Tuzla, Tuzla,
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Corresponding Author:
Mirela Duranovic, PhD, Tuzla University, Faculty of Education and
Rehabilitation, Univerzitetska 1, 75000, Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Email: mirela.duranovic@bih.net.ba

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Duranovic and Sehic 279
especially with multisyllabic words. These difficulties reflect
the children’s poor phonological representations and pro-
cessing (De Bree, 2007). Gerrits and De Bree (2009) found
that speech perception and production performance of chil-
dren at familial risk of dyslexia was poorer than that of con-
trols. Speaking rate and the proportion of pausing time to
speaking time may provide an early indication of reading
outcome in children at high risk for reading disability (Smith,
Roberts, Smith, Locke, & Bennett, 2006).
Kamhi and colleagues (1990) examined the speech pro-
duction abilities of young, poor readers. Their results
showed that poor readers made more speech errors than
good readers when producing both words and phrases.
The poor readers took significantly longer to produce
three of the words correctly than did their nondisabled
peers. The data indicated that encoding limitations, rather
than speech production limitations, were primarily respon-
sible for the longer acquisition time.
Articulatory awareness was measured in adults with dys-
lexia, on a task that is not confounded with orthography, and
the group with dyslexia showed deficits on this task in com-
parison to the control group. Information about articulatory
movements for specific phonemes is less accessible to dyslex-
ics because of a deficient phonological processing system. An
articulatory awareness deficit can persist into adulthood, even
when literacy skills are no longer seriously impaired, which
suggests that this may be part of a cognitive deficit that under-
lies dyslexia (Griffiths & Frith, 2002).
In speech research, a metronome is often used to mea-
sure timing precision. Wolff (2002) asked adolescents and
adults with dyslexia to repeat the bisyllabic consonant-vowel,
or CV, sequences /pa-ta/ and /ta-ka/ and the trisyllabic/
pa-ta-ka/ correctly in time with a metronome beat. The
findings indicated that during a motor sequencing task, stu-
dents with dyslexia anticipated the signal of an isochronic
pacing metronome by intervals that were two or three times
as long as those of age-matched readers or adults without
dyslexia. Children with dyslexia deviated more from the
prescribed rate, repeated syllables too slowly at all metro-
nome speeds, and made more speech sequencing errors
than nondyslexic children with other learning disabilities
(Wolff, Michel, & Ovrut, 1990).
A significant proportion of children with dyslexia show
a comorbidity with motor disorders, which—it has been
hypothesized—reflects an automaticity deficit or a cerebellar
dysfunction. The automaticity/cerebellar deficit framework
researchers postulated that the cerebellum was unable to
regulate motor control. Therefore, articulation in speech
would lead to deficient phonological representations and/or
to automate of overlearned tasks in reading and would
affect the learning of grapheme and phoneme correspon-
dences (Caylak, 2010).
The automaticity/cerebellar deficit framework provides
demonstration that it is possible to explain motor, speed,
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and phonological deficits within a unified account (Nicolson
& Fawcett, 2005). If an infant has a cerebellar impairment,
this will first show up as a mild motor difficulty—the infant
may be slower to sit up and to walk, and may have greater
problems with fine muscular control. If we consider that
our most complex motor skill is articulation, the infant
might be slower to start babbling and, later, talking. Speech
and walking may be less fluent in infants with cerebellar
impairment. If articulation is less fluent than normal, it
takes up more conscious resources, leaving fewer resources
to process sensory feedback. Processing the auditory, pho-
nemic structure of spoken words may be less complete
(Fawcett & Nicolson, 2004).
Kasselimis, Margarity, and Vlachos (2008) carried out a
study with aims (a) to assess the cerebellar deficit hypothesis
by examining children’s performance in cerebellar and cog-
nitive tasks associated with dyslexia and (b) to investigate if
there is a differentiation in articulation speed in children with
dyslexia. Children with dyslexia showed significant impair-
ment in one cerebellar test and performed significantly
worse during the articulation speed test than the control
group. The present study supports the cerebellar deficit
hypothesis and the relationship between reading impairment
and speed of articulation.
There are three current theoretical issues that have not
yet been fully resolved in the literature. It is not clear (1)
whether the problems arise specifically in speech motor
planning or whether they also reflect slower speech produc-
tion, (2) whether such deficits are found only with more com-
plex stimuli, and (3) whether it is only the occurrence of
errors in speeded repetition that results in deficient perfor-
mance (Fawcett & Nicolson, 2002).
There is growing interest in examining whether the man-
ner in which a particular orthography accurately represents
phonology relates to dyslexia (Goulandris, 2003). The aim of
the present study is to examine the articulatory movements in
children with dyslexia who speak Bosnian, a language with
transparent orthography. Transparent orthographies are those
where the grapheme–phoneme correspondence is one to one.
The mappings from letters to sound are much more consistent,
with very few irregular words (Gupta & Jamal, 2006).
Consistency in sound–letter associations and primarily one-
to-one phoneme–grapheme correspondence makes Bosnian a
transparent orthography.
There has been little systematic research on the articula-
tion of children with dyslexia in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In
this article, we concentrate on articulatory movements in
children with dyslexia with the aim of investigating whether
they have slower articulation of speech. Also in this article
we report research on whether children with dyslexia simply
have slower articulation during pronunciation of a single
phoneme or whether the slower articulation problem also
occurs when moving articulators from one articulatory ges-
ture to another.
280 Journal of Learning Disabilities 46(3)
Method
Design
The research presented here was designed to examine the
speed of articulatory movement involved in speech produc-
tion. Articulation of voiceless plosives was measured.
Plosives represent the basis for the pronunciation of some
other consonants, both in terms of behavior of speech
organs during the articulation and in terms of acoustic
structure, because their elements can be found in some
other consonants. They are very important for development
of the sound system in children. It is no wonder that they
occur among the first sounds children make. They are sim-
pler, with frequency slightly represented in speech (20.5%),
and more resilient than other sounds on a variety of patho-
logical deviations in articulation. The group of plosives
consists of six consonants of the Bosnian language: p, b, t,
d, k, and g. The common feature of the plosive is airflow
stop through partitions (occlusion), then a sudden release of
the airstream (explosion). Partitions are created using dif-
ferent parts of speech organs. Lips are the most important
for pronunciation of sounds p and b, tongue tip is the most
active for pronunciation of sounds t and d, and tongue back
is the most engaged for pronunciation of sounds k and g
(Vladisavljevic, 1981). So, tasks in this study included lips,
tongue tip, and tongue back movements.
Analysis was undertaken in four ways: (1) time of
occlusion duration for plosives (duration of stop), (2) time
of voice onset time for plosives, (3) diadochokinetic rate—
articulators rate measured by pronunciation of monosylla-
bles and trisyllable, and (4) time of moving articulators
from one gesture to another—time of interval length (from
the explosion of one plosive to the start of the explosion of
another plosive).
Participants
A group of children with dyslexia (mean ages 9 and 14 years)
was studied, together with group of children without dyslexia,
matched for age. Participants were monolingual native speakers
of Bosnian. The participants were enrolled in Grades 4 and 9 in
two public schools in Tuzla Canton. The children with dyslexia
were recruited from the same classes as the typically achieving
readers, and they did not attend additional remedial reading
classes. According to the teachers’ reports, none of these stu-
dents had any speech, language, or intellectual problems. None
had ever been referred for speech or language treatment. All of
them were children of upper-middle-class families. All were
first diagnosed with dyslexia during this research.
The diagnosis followed the recommendations in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–
Fourth Edition (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association,
1994), namely, normal level of general intelligence, and
no neurological, sensory, or educational deficit that could
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justify their reading impairments. None of the participants
reported a history of neurological diseases, psychiatric
disorders, or hearing problems. All children received an
evaluation of nonverbal IQ with Raven’s Progressive
Matrices by a psychologist who verified the criteria of
normal intelligence.
Children with dyslexia were tested by a speech lan-
guage therapist, an expert on dyslexia. All participants
were given tests of reading and writing. For the evaluation
of reading and writing abilities, a reading test for school
children was used measuring reading time and reading
errors for real words and for nonwords. Writing was mea-
sured by 2-min spelling and 1- min writing. Tests titled
One-Minute Reading Aloud (Furlan, 1965) and Word List
for Checking Reading Skills (Matanovic-Mamuzic, 1982)
were used. The 2-min spelling, 1-min writing, and non-
sense passage reading subtests were adapted for the
Bosnian language from the Dyslexia Screening Test–Junior
(Fawcett & Nicolson, 2004).
For all reading and writing measures, to qualify as having
dyslexia, participants had to score below two standard devia-
tions of the mean performance of the controls. In total, the
diagnostic tests were performed with 41 children with dyslexia
and 41 children without dyslexia. (See Table 1 for participant
characteristics and group differences.)
Materials and Procedures
Speaker data collection. The participants were asked to
produce monosyllables, /pa/, /ta/, and /ka/, and the trisyllable
/pataka/, as fast as possible. The children were instructed as
follows: Take a deep breath and repeat pa-pa-pa/ta-ta-ta/ka-
ka-ka/pa-ta-ka, as fast as possible.
Participants repeated the stimuli until instructed to
stop, after more than three repetitions, because three rep-
etitions were planned to be used for analysis. Three trials
of each task were taken. The experimenter previously
demonstrated by example how to do that and gave instruc-
tions to pronounce it as fast as possible. The fastest and
most accurate production among the three trials was
selected for analysis.
Recording.  The recording was done in a quiet room.
The speech productions of the participants were
recorded using a Sony (MZ-R91) Portable Mini-Disc
Player/Recorder and a Sony (ECM-MS907) Electret
Condenser Microphone, with microphone-to-mouth
distance of 30 cm.
Editing.  Data was stored on a personal computer. Dr. Speech
software (Version 4: subprogram, Real Analysis: Tiger Elec-
tronics, Seattle, WA) was used in the analysis. Real Analysis
software is a real-time speech assessment and training system
that helps to analyze, document, teach, reinforce, and report
speech waveform in various applications. It is a powerful clini-
cal tool that provides highly versatile information for speech
Duranovic and Sehic 281

Table 1. Test Scores and Ages for Children With and Without Dyslexia.

Children Children
Children With Without Children With Without
Dyslexia (9 years Dyslexia Dyslexia Dyslexia
old) (9 years old) (14 years old) (14 years old)  

  M SD M SD p M SD M SD p
Age in years and   9.26   1.07  9.38   .97   .710  14.16   .66 14.30   .71   .500
months
1-min readinga   26.10   7.51 67.10 12.15 <.001  65.30 14.53 99.67 11.81 <.001
Errors, real-word  25.87  11.30  2.6  1.99 <.001  10.05  2.19   .43   .75 <.001
readingb
Reading time, real- 238.07 115.28 86.13 17.46 <.001 106.00 24.44 38.43 10.78 <.001
word reading(s)b
2-min spellingc   7.33   2.19 13.22  2.39 <.001  14.85  2.74 22.33   2.11 <.001
1-min writingc   5.43   2.14  8.95  2.78 <.001  10.78  5.65 16.35   3.12 <.001
Nonsense passage  26.58  16.96 62.53   3.878 <.001  41.75 11.34 70.88   3.28 <.001
readingc
a
One-minute Reading Aloud (Furlan, 1965).
b
Word List for Checking Reading Skills (Matanovic-Mamuzic, 1982).
c
Subtests adapted for the Bosnian language from the Dyslexia Screening Test–Junior (Fawcett & Nicolson, 2004).

assessment, including among several features, real-time
recording and playback (Huang & Lin, 1995).
Analyses.  The total duration of the monosyllables and tri-
syllable were measured in all three repetitions, and the
duration of the second syllable of the trisyllable in three rep-
etitions. The results obtained by producing monosyllables
were used to analyze the speed of movement of the lips,
tongue tip, and tongue back. Duration from the beginning of
explosion of the phoneme /p/ to beginning of explosion the
next /p/ was used for analysis of the movement of the lips.
The same procedure was used with the measurement of /t/
and /k/ for getting information about the movement of the
tongue tip and tongue back.
Incomplete closures of stop consonants reflect undershoot-
ing of the articulatory movements (Esther, 2001). According
to Ackermann and Ziegler (1991; as quoted in Esther, 2001,
p. 11) “incomplete closures resulting from reduced extension
of the mandibular, labial, or lingual movements or from
reduced occlusive force may be expected to result in an
increase of sound pressure during stop realization.”
Characteristics of plosives are to stop airflow through
partition (occlusion), then suddenly release the airstream
(explosion). The duration of stopping airflow through
partitions, or occlusion, was measured. Vladisavljevic
(1981) considered that from an acoustic aspect, there is
complete silence during occlusion for voices /p/, /t/, /k/.
Suspended airflow, after sudden opening of the partition,
appears as a crack of weaker or stronger intensity, which
extends almost throughout the frequency spectrum, creat-
ing small, characteristic acoustic energy concentrates in
certain frequency areas.
Voice onset time was estimated by the measured time
from the beginning of the realization of a consonant phoneme–
plosive to the occurrence of first laryngeal wave of the
vowel that follows. Pronunciation of the trisyllable /pataka/
was used for this purpose.
The speed of making rapid speech movements was also
measured by analyzing the trisyllable /pataka/ in all three
repetitions, and the duration of the second syllable in three
repetitions. Duration of the interval P-T (from beginning
of explosion of phoneme P to beginning of explosion of
phoneme T) and duration of interval T-K (from beginning
of explosion of phoneme T to beginning of explosion of
phoneme K) were measured on the same trisyllable. The
measurement was carried out on the middle syllable of the
trisyllable because it was the most suitable for acoustic
measurements. (First and last phonemes were often not
sufficiently visible.)
The measurement for all tasks was done in milliseconds.
The method used in the present study was a modification of
the methods that were used in the research carried out by
Hedjever (1996), Duranovic and Zecic (2001/2002), and
Duranovic (2003).
Results
Mean for scores of children with dyslexia and scores pro-
duced by the control group are shown in Figure 1. It can
be seen that the performance of the children with dyslexia
was consistently worse than that of the controls, for all
tasks. The mean for all 14 tasks is higher for children with
dyslexia.

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282 Journal of Learning Disabilities 46(3)

Table 2. Results of the Analyses of Variance to Show Effects by

Age and Group.
Children With Dyslexia
Control Group Age Group
3,500 Speech
3,000 Production Tasks F p F p
2,500 OCCLT F(1) = .53 NS F(1) = 68.52 <.001
2,000 OCCLK F(1) = .80 NS F(1) = 33.17 <.001
1,500 VOTT F(1) = .09 NS F(1) = 26.29 <.001
1,000 VOTK F(1) = .44 NS F(1) = 27.24 <.001
500
PAMIDDLE F(1) = .08 NS F(1) = 14.35 <.001
TAMIDDLE F(1) = .23 NS F(1) = 37.34 <.001
0
KAMIDDLE F(1) = .53 NS F(1) = 04.22 <.050
OCCLT
OCCLK
VOTT
VOTK

PATHREE F(1) = .34 NS F(1) = 19.11 <.001

PAMIDDLE
TAMIDDLE
KAMIDDLE

PATHREE
PTKMIDDL

TATHREE
KATHREE

TATHREE F(1) = .49 NS F(1) = 39.81 <.001

PTKTHREE
PTINTERV
TKINTERV
KATHREE F(1) = .02 NS F(1) = 16.27 <.001
PTKMIDDL F(1) = .44 NS F(1) = 00.40 NS
PTKTHREE F(1) = .39 NS F(1) = 06.21 <.050
Figure 1. Mean performance in milliseconds of articulatory PTINTERV F(1) = .35 NS F(1) = 49.75 <.001
movement involved in speech production tasks. TKINTERV F(1) = .07 NS F(1) = 44.68 <.001
Note: OCCLT = occlusion of voice /t/; OCCLK = occlusion of voice /k/;
VOTT = voice onset time of /t/; VOTK = voice onset time of /k/; PAMID- Note: OCCLT = occlusion of voice /t/; OCCLK = occlusion of voice /k/;
DLE = duration of second syllable /pa/ in three repetitions; TAMIDDLE = VOTT = voice onset time of /t/;VOTK = voice onset time of /k/; PAMID-
duration of second syllable /ta/ in three repetitions; KAMIDDLE = dura- DLE = duration of second syllable /pa/ in three repetitions; TAMIDDLE =
tion of second syllable /ka/ in three repetitions; PTKMIDDL = duration duration of second syllable /ta/ in three repetitions; KAMIDDLE = dura-
of second syllable /pa-ta-ka/ in three repetitions; PATHREE = duration tion of second syllable /ka/ in three repetitions; PTKMIDDL = duration
of monosyllable /pa/ in all three repetitions; TATHREE = duration of of second syllable /pa-ta-ka/ in three repetitions; PATHREE = duration of
monosyllable /ta/ in all three repetitions; KATHREE = duration of mono- monosyllable /pa/ in all three repetitions; TATHREE = duration of mono-
syllable /ka/ in all three repetitions; PTKTHREE = duration of trisyllable syllable /ta/ in all three repetitions; KATHREE = duration of monosyllable
/pa-ta-ka/ in all three repetitions; PTINTERV = duration of interval P-T /ka/ in all three repetitions; ; PTKTHREE = duration of trisyllable /pa-ta-
(from beginning of explosion of sound P to beginning of explosion of ka/ in all three repetitions; PTINTERV = duration of interval P-T (from
sound T); TKINTERV = duration of interval T-K (from beginning of explo- beginning of explosion of sound P to beginning of explosion of sound T);
sion of sound T to beginning of explosion of sound K). TKINTERV = duration of interval T-K (from beginning of explosion of
sound T to beginning of explosion of sound K); NS = nonsignificant.

The analysis was performed on the data from the produc-
ing monosyllables and the trisyllable to verify that the chil-
dren with dyslexia and a group of children without dyslexia
differ with respect to the speed of simple articulatory ges-
ture production and the speed of moving articulators from
one gesture to another, and to verify effect of age on articu-
latory rates. First, we carried a one-way ANOVA to address
effect of age. One-way ANOVA was undertaken separately
for each task, involving the two groups. This analysis had
one factor: chronological age (9 and 14 years). Age effects
were not significant for any task (see Table 2). Because no
significant age effects had been found, difference by ages
for the children with dyslexia and the control group was not
considered in further analysis, and groups were divided
only by the presence or absence of dyslexia. Next, ANOVA
with the factor of group (dyslexia vs. control) revealed that
the region of significant difference between the children
with dyslexia and the control group was for all tasks, except
for the task where we measured the duration of the second
syllable of the trisyllable /pataka/ in three repetitions. It was
important to identify whether children with dyslexia per-
form worse than children of the same age without dyslexia.
It may be seen that the children with dyslexia performed
significantly worse than the same-age controls on all tasks,
except for one of them, which was previously mentioned.
Analysis of variance showed that children with dyslexia
differ from the control group in 13 variables in the speed of
articulatory movements. Discriminant analysis was employed
to examine which of a number of variables best differentiates
the groups. The 14 components were used as predictors (all
variables of the speed of articulatory movements) in the dis-
criminant analysis to distinguish among the groups (with
dyslexia and control). One significant discriminant function
was evident, λ = .39, χ2(14, n = 82) = 69.75, p =.00. This
function was significant and showed that there was a strong
association between groups and predictors. Based on the
examination of the standardized discriminant function and
structure coefficients (see Table 3), the variable with the
highest weight in defining the discriminant function was
occlusion of voice T (standardized coefficient = 0.61), fol-
lowed by duration of interval P-T (standardized coefficient =
0.40) and duration of second syllable /ta/ in three repeti-
tions (standardized coefficient = 0.37). All coefficients
were positive. Pronunciation of the second syllable of the

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Duranovic and Sehic 283

Table 3. Discriminant Analysis: Standardized Discriminant during the movement of articulators from one articulatory
Function and Structure Coefficients. gesture to another.
Standardized To examine the feature of the production of stop conso-
Discriminant nants in children with dyslexia, the present study compared
Speech Function Structure voice onset time (VOT) in those children with dyslexia and
Production Tasks Coefficient Coefficient the control group. VOT is the time interval between the
OCCLT  .613 .732
burst that marks the release of the stop closure and the
OCCLK  .216 .509 onset of quasiperiodicity, which reflects laryngeal vibra-
VOTT  .018 .453 tion (Lisker & Abramson, 1967). The VOT is affected by
VOTK −.284 .461 place of articulation and voicing. Plosives exhibit distinc-
PAMIDDLE −.142 .335 tive acoustic events on a finer time scale. Typically, the
TAMIDDLE  .365 .540 closure interval ends in an abrupt increase in acoustic
KAMIDDLE −.069 .182 energy across the frequency range. The release interval is
PATHREE  .345 .386 measured from this burst onset to the start of periodicity or
TATHREE  .107 .558 to the onset of noise or silence. The duration of the release
KATHREE −.219 .357 interval is called VOT in cases when periodicity is present
PTKMIDDL −.065 .056 (Stouten & Van Hamme, 2009). On a spectrogram, this is
PTKTHREE −.492 .220 seen as the time between a sharp onset of broadband energy
PTINTERV  .396 .623 (the burst) and the onset of the formant transition (onset of
TKINTERV  .300 .591 vocal-fold vibration; Gleason & Ratner, 1998). VOT is a
temporal acoustic property that specifies voicing in stop
Note: OCCLT = occlusion of voice /t/; OCCLK = occlusion of voice /k/;
VOTT = voice onset time of /t/;VOTK = voice onset time of /k/; PAMID- consonants. Voiced stop consonants are associated with
DLE = duration of second syllable /pa/ in three repetitions; TAMIDDLE = relatively short VOT values, whereas voiceless stop conso-
duration of second syllable /ta/ in three repetitions; KAMIDDLE = dura- nants are associated with relatively long VOT values
tion of second syllable /ka/ in three repetitions; PTKMIDDL = duration
(Allen, Miller, & DeSteno, 2003). Voiceless stops such as
of second syllable /pa-ta-ka/ in three repetitions; PATHREE = duration of
monosyllable /pa/ in all three repetitions; TATHREE = duration of mono- (t) are characterized by VOTs that range between 40 and
syllable /ta/ in all three repetitions; KATHREE = duration of monosyllable 100 ms (Gleason & Ratner, 1998). In this research, the mean
/ka/ in all three repetitions; ; PTKTHREE = duration of trisyllable /pa-ta- of VOTs for children with dyslexia was 89 and 88.63 ms.
ka/ in all three repetitions; PTINTERV = duration of interval P-T (from
beginning of explosion of sound P to beginning of explosion of sound T);
If we consider previous data, we can conclude that they do
TKINTERV = duration of interval T-K (from beginning of explosion of not have longer VOT than it is expected, but it was signifi-
sound T to beginning of explosion of sound K). cantly longer than in the control group. The performance
of the children with dyslexia was inferior to that of their
controls on both tasks that were measured—VOT and
trisyllable /pataka/ in three repetitions is clearly not loaded occlusion. The occlusion of voice T is the function that
on the discriminant function. It is the weakest predictor, and most discriminates between children with dyslexia and
this fact suggests that it is not associated with dyslexia but, those without dyslexia. Post, Foorman, and Hiscock (1997)
rather, is a function of other unassessed factors. Furthermore, examined VOT during reading nonwords. They did not
functions at group centroids showed negative values for nor- find speech production difficulties of /t/ and /d/.
mally achieving children (−1.249) and positive values for Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, and Scanlon (2004) sum-
children with dyslexia (1.249). Therefore, normally achiev- marized some of the most important findings from research
ing children would more likely have low scores during the evaluating the hypothesized causes of dyslexia during the
evaluation of the articulatory speed. In contrast, children past four decades. They considered different researchers,
with dyslexia would more likely have high scores. including Elbro et al. (1998, as cited in Vellutino, Fletcher,
Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004, p. 23), who reported that chil-
dren without dyslexia in dyslexic families had deficits, rela-
Discussion tive to controls, on tests evaluating articulatory accuracy.
The aim of the present study was to compare the speed In the present study, the performance of the children
of articulatory movements of children with dyslexia in with dyslexia was inferior to that of their controls on all
transparent Bosnian orthography with a group of children tests except for the test in which we measured the duration
without dyslexia matched for age. The results showed of the second syllable of the trisyllable /pataka/ in three
that children with dyslexia have significantly slower repetitions. We can try to explain this result with the
articulatory movements than the control group. Children assumption that the speed of moving articulators was not
with dyslexia have problems in the speed of articulation, slower in children with dyslexia when it required a smaller
both during pronunciation of single phonemes and number of movements. In the case of three repetitions of

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284 Journal of Learning Disabilities 46(3)
the trisyllable /pataka/ and the speed of these movements,
differences between children with dyslexia and normally
achieving children were significant, when more number of
movements were required. Wolff, Cohen, and Drake (1984)
found that adolescents with reading problems have greater
difficulty rapidly sequencing syllable strings than repeat-
ing single syllables. It was argued that the threshold at
which movement speed degrades timing precision for
coordinated action best characterizes the motor impair-
ment of individuals with reading problems.
Results suggest that children with dyslexia have prob-
lems in the speed of articulatory movement involved in
speech production. The present findings are in line with ear-
lier reports of a deficit in the repetition of articulatory ges-
tures, problems in speeded articulation in both production
and planning of gestures in children with dyslexia (see
Fawcett & Nicolson, 2002). Our data extend these previous
findings by showing that VOT and time of occlusion are
effective acoustic parameters for articulation testing in chil-
dren with dyslexia. Also, it has been shown that during anal-
ysis of the trisyllable /pataka/, duration of intervals of P-T
and T-K should be taken into consideration because discrim-
inant analysis showed that these variables best differentiate
groups. The results also showed that articulatory speed is
important to distinguish between children with dyslexia and
control group for both languages with opaque orthography,
and in languages w ​ ith transparent orthography.
Our finding about slower articulation rate in children
with dyslexia is in line with a study by Fawcett & Nicolson
(1995) who found that for peg placing and articulation rate,
the children with dyslexia were significantly slower than
their chronological age controls and suggested that children
with dyslexia have persistent, and unexpectedly severe,
problems in motor skill. Snowling (1981) and Catts (1989)
also showed that older children with dyslexia are slower
and make more error on complex articulation tasks. This
was explained by difficulties in the planning stage of speech
production.
Smith, Lambrecht Smith, Locke, and Bennett (2008)
examined the development of timing characteristics in
early spontaneous speech of children who were later
identified as having a reading disability (RD). Early
speaking rate was significantly slower in the group with
RD, with significantly different patterns of pausing com-
pared with children without RD. Phonetic plans may be
shorter and/or less specified in children with RD, surfac-
ing as slow, short speaking turns with increased pausing
relative to articulation.
As we previously mentioned, there is no consensus
about articulation rate and differences between children
with dyslexia and their controls. In the research of Di
Filippo and colleagues (2006), children with reading dis-
abilities and control children did not differ in articulation
rate, and no clear deficits in articulatory speed were found
in the adult group with dyslexia in the research by
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Pennington, Van Orden, Smith, Green, and Haith (1990).
Smith and others (2006) found that children with RD
showed a significantly slower speaking rate. Articulation
rate did not differ significantly across groups. Results in
our research are not the same as these other studies because
clear differences in articulation rate can be seen from the
results of analysis of variance and discriminant analysis. A
possible explanation for these differences in results is that
different techniques are used, and some of them are more
sensitive than others.
Esther (2001) wrote about diadochokinesis (DDK) and
used Lundeen’s (1950) definition as “the maximum speed
of movement with which a given reciprocating act can be
produced” (Esther, 2001, p. 3). In different literature, DDK
analysis is considered as the measurement of rate and
accuracy of placement. DDK rate is considered a maxi-
mum performance test. It can reflect diminished coordina-
tion, range, or rate of articulators in clinical neurology.
DDK rate could predict articulatory performance. It might
be because DDK rate is sensitive to oromotor deficits
(Esther, 2001). Measures of articulatory function are com-
pleted via diadochokinetic tasks designed to measure pro-
duction in various contexts (Robarge, 2009).
Diadochokinetic rate is one means of assessing oral motor
skills. DDK rate provides information about a person’s
ability to make rapid speech movements using different
parts of his mouth. In this research, we can talk about diad-
ochokinesis for tasks that have measured the phonemes
/pa/, /ta/ and /ka/ where children used the front (the lips),
middle (the tip of the tongue), and back (the back of the
tongue). On all tasks, children with dyslexia were signifi-
cantly worse than the control group.
Differences between groups were obtained for the
interval P-T and interval K-T. On both tasks, children
with dyslexia had significant worse results than the con-
trol group, and discriminant analysis showed that these
two tasks are two of the most important functions that
discriminate between children with dyslexia and children
without dyslexia.
These results are in line with previous studies. Lalain
and colleagues (2003) used aerodynamic/acoustic data to
explore how children with dyslexia produce bilabial stops
in French within a sentence, where they occurred in two
positions and in three-vowel environments. A study with
French dyslexics found that even though these children
were able to produce a voicing contrast for /p/ and /b/,
their realizations showed different timing of articulatory
movement than those of a reading-age and chronological-
age matched group.
Several studies connected articulatory and phonological
problems in people with dyslexia. Mann and Foy (2007)
focused on speech production in relation to the development
of phonological awareness. Their results suggest that although
the phoneme awareness measures were not apparently
related to the articulatory measures, there were consistent
Duranovic and Sehic 285
associations between rhyme awareness and articulation.
This research can be extended with the aim of investigating
the connection of current problems in articulation rate with
phonological skills in children with dyslexia.
There is evidence that children with dyslexia have prob-
lems in the speed of articulatory movements involved in
speech production, including the speeded production of sin-
gle articulatory gestures and several articulatory gestures.
There is no other visible cause for lower articulation speed
except the presence of dyslexia. The results of this study
confirm the previous claims about speech problems in chil-
dren with dyslexia. This study provides useful information
about acoustic characteristics of speech, including voice
onset time, time of occlusion, and evidence about slower
mobility of lips, tongue tip, and tongue back in children with
dyslexia. There is also evidence about slower mobility and
moving from one gesture to another in children with dys-
lexia. These results can lead to a conclusion that there are
problems in articulatory movements included in the speech
production in children with dyslexia.
Slower speed of articulatory movements in children with
dyslexia indicates the need for organization in the training
for improvement of these skills. Joly-Pottuz, Mercier, Leynaud,
and Habib (2008) evaluated the benefit of training sensory-
motor aspects of articulatory function in a group of children
with dyslexia. Auditory phonological training included daily
listening series of exercises, mainly containing triplets of
words the dyslexics had to compare phonologically to dis-
close similarity between 2 of the 3 stimuli. Articulatory
awareness exercises put emphasis on phonetic oppositions
between voiced and voiceless stop consonants. In the part of
the training on the phoneme production with computerized
visual feedback, children had to pronounce a chosen pho-
neme through a microphone, while the program analyzed the
acoustic quality of the production; the utterance was then
transformed into a visual index. The program was also used
for improvement in the accuracy of phoneme production;
development of skills in pronouncing a sequence of different
phonemes; and by using a specially designed 2- and 4-phoneme
contrast to improve the accuracy in contrasting phonemes.
Results showed that this training is an efficient way for improv-
ing poor representation of phonemes.
It is important for speech therapists in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, who provide support for children with dyslexia,
to include in their work, among other interventions, remedia-
tion tools for the improvement of articulatory function. Further
research is needed to explore the effectiveness and usefulness
of such training in work with children with dyslexia for
Bosnian and other languages with transparent orthography.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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