Study may help spot dyslexia early

WASHINGTON -- Pick up the phone and hear, "Hey, what's up?" Chances are, those few words are enough to recognize who's speaking -- perhaps unless you have dyslexia.

In a surprise discovery, researchers found adults with that reading disorder also have a hard time recognizing voices.

The work isn't just a curiosity. It fits with research to uncover the building blocks of literacy and how they can go wrong. The eventual goal: To spot at-risk youngsters early, instead of diagnosing dyslexia in a struggling second-grader.

"Everybody is interested in understanding the root cause of dyslexia, so we can intervene early and do something about it," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology cognitive neuroscientist John Gabrieli, senior author of the study published last week in the journal Science.

Dyslexia is thought to affect 8 percent to 15 percent of Americans. It's a language-based problem in which the brain struggles with "phonological processing," the ability to distinguish and manipulate sounds, like "bah" and "pah," that eventually have to be linked to written letters and words.

Previous studies showed it's easier to recognize voices in one's own language. So the researchers recruited English-speaking college students and young adults, half with dyslexia, half without. They watched animated characters in English and Chinese. Both dyslexics and nondyslexics correctly matched the voices of Chinese-speaking characters about half the time. But when they heard English speakers, the dyslexics were right half the time while the nondyslexics identified 70 percent of the voices correctly.

Next up: Testing 5-year-olds.