‘Sounding it out’ not so easy for children with dyslexia

May 25, 2021

Photo of girl sitting on sofa while using tablet. Photo by Julia Cameron (Pexels)

Photo of girl sitting on sofa while using tablet. Photo by Julia Cameron (Pexels)

For years, competent and well-educated elementary school teachers and well-intentioned, if exasperated, parents have routinely repeated a mantra to struggling early readers: “Sound it out.”

But what if a child can’t? What if something in a child’s brain is blocking their very efforts to achieve such a seemingly simple task?

As part of a multi-year project, partly funded by BrainsCAN, cognitive neuroscientists at Western’s Brain and Mind Institute studied children’s brains using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). After a deep dive into the data, they discovered a biological deficit for some that impairs phonological decoding – the ability to sound words out.

The findings are published in the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.

“We now have a much better understanding of how the structure of a developing brain is mirrored in children’s reading, language and math development,” said Marc Joanisse, associate dean (research) in Western’s Faculty of Social Science and senior author of the study

Read the full story by Jeff Renaud at Western News.