difficulty understanding speech despite normal hearing, exhibit a temporal sequencing decrement ( Trainor and Trehub, 1989 ). There is, thus, converging evidence to suspect that the left hemisphere is specifically pre-wired to support the function of processing transient sensory events, especially when these events become meaningful through their temporo-spectral characteristics. Therefore, the notion that dyslexia may in fact be a `dyschronia' ( Llins, 1993 ) has emerged during the last few years. One group of such studies has concerned the competence of dyslexic children in fine motor skills. The first evidence in this area has come from early studies by Stambak, showing that dyslexic children perform significantly worse than normal in tasks where they have to reproduce a rhythmic tapping sequence ( Stambak, 1951 ). More recently, Nicolson and Fawcett have repeatedly shown that dyslexic children differ significantly even from reading-age controls in tasks involving automation of motor skill, motor reaction times, speed of naming and even in pure body motor balance ( Fawcett and Nicolson, 1992 , 1994 ; Nicolson and Fawcett, 1993 , 1994 ). Although initially emphasizing a possibly specific automation defect in dyslexia, these authors currently favour the thesis of a cerebellar involvement, especially in view of evidence of time estimation deficits in dyslexics, a function thought to depend on the activity of the cerebellum ( Nicolson et al ., 1995 ; Fawcett et al ., 1996 ). This position has been reinforced by recent results which Nicolson and colleagues ( Nicolson et al ., 1999