Dr Desiré Carioti, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

A reading-free screening tool for the screening of dyslexia in monolinguals and minority language speakers: why rhythm matters.
Abstract: Several studies suggested that musical and, especially, rhythmic skills could be reduced in children and adults with reading difficulties or diagnosed with developmental dyslexia. Although this link between music and reading has been explored (see Gordon et al., 2015 for a meta-analysis) returning heterogeneous results, the specific relationship between rhythm and phonological processing emerged as crucial. In line with these considerations, and to better interpret literature results, the rhythm-language relationship should be further explored, and that’s why we run a meta-analytic study to deepen this aspect. Moreover, the wide range of results concerning poor rhythmic and, more precisely, timing abilities of participants with dyslexia, encouraged us to include some timing tasks (entrainment, free tapping, and anticipatory timing) in our reading-free screening of reading difficulties, a computerized tool addressed to both monolinguals and minority language speakers. Results obtained through our meta-analysis and with this tool will be presented.