Remediation of a phonological representation deficit in Chinese children with dyslexia: A comparison between metalinguistic training and working memory training

A form‐preparation task in the language production field was adopted to examine output phonological representations in Chinese dyslexia and their susceptibility to training. Forty‐one Chinese children with dyslexia (7–11 years old) and 36 chronological age controls completed this task. The controls demonstrated a marginally significant syllable facilitation effect (d = −0.13), indicating their use of syllable‐sized phonological representations during speech production, while the group with dyslexia showed a significantly different pattern (d = 0.04), opposite to the direction of a facilitation effect. The children with dyslexia were then randomly assigned to either metalinguistic training (N = 22) or working memory training (N = 19). Only the metalinguistic training subgroup demonstrated a significant syllable facilitation effect afterward (metalinguistic: d = −0.13; working memory: d = −0.01). The results suggest the presence of a phonological representation deficit at the syllable level in Chinese dyslexia and its possible remediation by metalinguistic training. Such a phonological deficit in readers of a logographic script strongly supports the impaired phonological representation view of developmental dyslexia. A video of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/zT2Be0xMkh0. In a picture naming task, Chinese typically developing children showed a larger syllable facilitation effect during speech production, than children with dyslexia. A syllable facilitation effect emerged in a subgroup of the children with dyslexia after a 12‐week metalinguistic training, but not in another subgroup with a working memory training. The results suggest a phonological representation deficit at the syllable level in Chinese dyslexia that can possibly be remediated by metalinguistic training but not by working memory training. Such a phonological deficit in readers of a logographic script strongly supports the impaired phonological representation view of developmental dyslexia