The more prevalent view for the past 15-20 years involves language problems. Language is a highly complex function, however, and not all aspects of language appear to be implicated as primary causes in developmental dyslexia. Not all children with dyslexia have histories involving early language disorder. One recurring question in the field is whether or not difficulty with the phonological aspects of reading is caused by difficulty with auditory perception. No differences have been found between children with and without dyslexia in perception of nonverbal environmental sounds.
Possible difficulties appear related to speech sounds alone.
Measure of ability to listen, remember, and repeat auditory stimuli have also been used to assess verbal short-term memory, but Th. Individuals with dyslexia have been found to perform less well than same-age normal readers on tasks requiring them to repeat information verbatim. The term phonological awareness refers to the metacognitive understanding that spoken language is made up of a series of sounds and that these sounds occupy a particular sequential order. Several British researchers have provided evidence of a link between deficits in phonological awareness and deficits in reading. While it has been argued that phonological awareness may be an effect of mature reading rather than its cause, it has also been demonstrated that the degree to which phonological awareness is developed prior to reading instruction plays a powerful role in determining reading outcomes.