The mechanisms subtending the positive association between reading and rhythmic skills, remain unclear. Our goal was to perform a systematic test between two major explanations: the Temporal Sampling Framework (TSF), which highlights the relation between rhythm and speech encoding, and a competitor explanation based on the enhancing role of rhythm in prediction within visual and auditory sequences. We compared beat vs. duration perception for their associations with encoding and sequence learning tasks, using both visual and auditory sequences. We also compared these associations for Portuguese vs. Greek participants, since Portuguese stress-timed rhythm is more compatible with music-like beats, lasting around 500 ms, than Greek, syllable-timed rhythm (faster). If rhythm acts via speech encoding, it should be more salient in Portuguese. Consistent with TSF’s proposal, we found a significant association between beat perception and auditory encoding in Portuguese but not Greek participants. Correlations of time perception with visual and auditory sequence learning were either null or insufficiently supported in both groups. Altogether, the evidence favored TSF-related predictions in detriment of the rhythm-as-prediction-enhancer hypothesis.

It is known that dyslexics underperform controls in time perception tasks using visual stimuli. However, it remains undetermined whether this deficit is secondary to problems in visual, time-unrelated domains, such as luminance contrasts and/or motion processing. To address this gap, we asked adults with dyslexia and matched controls to perform an interval comparison task involving five different types of visual stimuli with different levels of challenge regarding luminance contrasts and motion. Results showed poorer time discrimination in adults with dyslexia, but this group-related disadvantage did not change according to stimulus type. Complementary analyses of oculomotor behavior during the task suggested that the poorer timing performance of dyslexics may relate to attention and/or engagement with the task. Our findings strengthen the evidence in favor of time perception deficits in dyslexia, but they do not support the hypothesis that these are secondary to visual problems.

Difficulties in both duration-based and beat-based time perception have been reported in individuals with dyslexia. It is also known that internalised beat cues may aid in the processing of durations. In the present study, we investigated whether the observed challenges in duration processing among individuals with dyslexia stem from their inability to utilise internal beat cues. Participants with vs. without dyslexia were asked to estimate the duration of intervals ranging from 500 ms to 10 s. In one condition (beat cue), participants listened to a sequence of 500 ms beats before the interval, and in the other they were exposed to silence (no beat cue), while their EEG was recorded. Beat cues enhanced the estimation of longer intervals and impaired that of shorter ones. Interestingly, the two groups did not differ in duration estimation performance, but they did differ in their utilisation of beat cues, with dyslexic adults showing less sensitivity to these, whether the impact was negative (cues before shorter intervals) or positive (before longer intervals). Additionally, the entrainment of brain waves to the target frequency (2 Hz) was significantly higher compared to entrainment to a non-target frequency (3.5 Hz), and cross-group differences were null. Our findings suggest that adults with dyslexia may have difficulties either in retaining the beat when it is no longer audible, or in using the internalised beat for duration estimation. Nevertheless, they seem capable of achieving the same estimation accuracy as neurotypical adults, possibly through compensatory strategies.

Various theories have attempted to explain the association between the perception of musical rhythm and reading skills, one οf them being the Temporal Sampling Framework (TSF). According to TSF, neural entrainment to auditory input facilitates both rhythm and speech perception, in the latter case by enhancing the acquisition of speech units (ordinal encoding) at different frequencies. In line with this, we found a correlation between beat perception and ordinal encoding of meaningless auditory sequences in a previous study, but evidence that neural entrainment underpins this association is still lacking. In the current investigation, participants engaged in a beat perception task alongside auditory and visual ordinal encoding tasks during which their EEG was recorded and later analyzed for strength of neural entrainment. We replicated the positive correlation between beat perception and auditory encoding, and we found neural entrainment to the frequency of auditory sequences (around 2.5 Hz). However, no direct evidence pointed to neural entrainment as the common mechanism. Our findings suggest that neural entrainment either operates differently than TSF predicted or is not the sole determinant of ordinal encoding.

Duration perception abilities seem to enhance reading skills, but the reason for this remains under debate. Some studies focused on the ability to perceive the length of sounds (speech-related duration perception), while others approached general time skills (using, e.g., beep stimuli), but a direct comparison between the two modalities has not been done so far. In the present study, we compared the relevance of domain-general (comparison of time intervals defined by beeps) vs. speech-specific duration perception (pre-attentive EEG responses to different consonants) as statistical predictors of reading in adults. Reading included word and pseudoword decoding, as well as reading comprehension. We made regression-based analyses with the two time-related predictors for each reading skill. Pseudoword decoding was the only reading skill that was significantly predicted by duration perception, and this happened for domain-general duration perception only. Our findings strengthen the idea that skilled duration perception enhances phonological coding and its impact on grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes. They also suggest that the benefits to phonological encoding are not specifically related to better processing of speech sound durations. Instead, the impact of skilled duration perception may rely on its connection to entrainment-to-speech skills, and the enhanced encoding of speech units that comes with it.

Background/Objectives: The mechanisms underlying the positive association between reading and rhythmic skills remain unclear. Our goal was to systematically test between two major explanations: the Temporal Sampling Framework (TSF), which highlights the relation between rhythm and speech encoding, and a competing explanation based on rhythm’s role in enhancing prediction within visual and auditory sequences. Methods: We compared beat versus duration perception for their associations with encoding and sequence learning (prediction-related) tasks, using both visual and auditory sequences. We also compared these associations for Portuguese vs. Greek participants, since Portuguese stress-timed rhythm is more compatible with music-like beats lasting around 500 ms, in contrast to the syllable-timed rhythm of Greek. If rhythm acts via speech encoding, its effects should be more salient in Portuguese. Results: Consistent with the TSF’s predictions, we found a significant association between beat perception and auditory encoding in Portuguese but not in Greek participants. Correlations between time perception and sequence learning in both modalities were either null or insufficiently supported in both groups. Conclusions: Altogether, the evidence supported the TSF-related predictions in detriment of the Rhythm-as-Predictor (RaP) hypothesis.