Dyslexia and Speech: Word Finding and Memory

Dyslexia is a difficulty with reading and spelling that begins in spoken language. Most children with dyslexia speak clearly. Most also find it hard to hear and work with the separate sounds inside words. Many are slow to bring words to mind, or to hold what they have just heard in memory. That is how dyslexia and speech are connected, and why the first clues are often heard in a child’s talking before they are seen in a school reader.

This guide covers the three spoken language skills under reading, what each sounds like at home, and how early talking relates to later reading. The definition itself is on the page about what dyslexia is.

Does dyslexia affect speech?

Dyslexia is not a speech disorder, and most children with dyslexia speak clearly. What dyslexia affects is the sound system that talking and reading share. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association describes problems with phonological processing, which is the handling of speech sounds, as a core deficit in dyslexia.

Dyslexia and speech meet in small ways that a parent can hear. Healthdirect lists delayed speech, trouble pronouncing some words and trouble with rhyme among the things seen in preschool children with dyslexia. A 2020 review of dyslexia research reports that these sound difficulties are present in the preschool years, long before reading lessons begin.

What are the three spoken language skills under reading?

Three spoken language skills are measured again and again in dyslexia research: awareness of the sounds in words, naming speed and verbal memory. AUSPELD, the national body for Australia’s SPELD organisations, groups the three as phonological processing. It says a child who is weak in one or more of them is likely to find reading and spelling hard to learn.

Skill	What it means	What you might hear at home
Hearing the sounds in words (phonological awareness)	Noticing that a spoken word is made of separate sounds, and being able to pull them apart and push them together	Rhymes that do not come, trouble saying what sound a word starts with, long words said with the sounds out of order
Naming speed (rapid automatised naming)	How quickly a word the child knows well can be brought to mind and said	Slow, effortful naming of things the child knows well, such as letters, numbers or colours; often alongside word-finding trouble: “the thing”, long pauses, a near miss
Verbal memory (phonological memory)	Holding spoken information in mind for the few seconds needed to use it	The second half of an instruction lost, a new name gone straight away, a word forgotten halfway through sounding it out

Hearing the sounds in words

A child reads a new word by turning its letters into sounds and blending them, and spells a word by breaking it into sounds and writing a letter or letters for each. Both depend on hearing that “ship” is three sounds and not one lump. AUSPELD’s parent guide puts it plainly: blending sounds supports reading, and splitting a word into its sounds supports spelling.

At home, weak sound awareness is a child who cannot give you a word that rhymes with “cat”, who is unsure whether “sun” and “sock” start the same way, or who keeps saying a long word with its sounds swapped around after other children the same age have stopped.

Naming speed and word finding

Naming speed is how fast a child can pull a familiar word out of memory and say it. It is tested by timing a child as they name rows of things they already know, such as letters and numbers. The formal name is rapid automatised naming, often shortened to RAN. A child weak in both sound awareness and naming speed is sometimes described as having double deficit dyslexia.

Many children with slow naming also have trouble finding words in conversation, a related difficulty. A child with word-finding trouble knows the word. Getting to it is what takes time. You hear fillers and detours (“the thing you cut with”), a wrong word that sounds close to the right one, and more trouble when the child is put on the spot. In reading, slow naming tends to show later, as reading that is correct but slow. AUSPELD notes that a weakness in rapid automatised naming makes reading and writing less fluent and often becomes clear further on in school. A 2016 review of children with a family history of dyslexia found naming speed was related to later reading in its own right.

Verbal memory and working memory

Verbal memory is the ability to hold speech in mind for a short time. Sounding out a word leans on it: a child has to keep the first sounds in mind while working out the last ones, then blend them all. Dyslexia and memory are linked in a second way too. Healthdirect describes working memory, holding information in mind while you work with it, as a weakness many people with dyslexia share, and gives following instructions with several steps and doing sums in your head as the everyday examples.

At home, weak verbal memory is “what was the second thing?”, a new teacher’s name that will not stick, or a child who sounds out c, a, t correctly and then says a different word. It is about speech held in mind for a few seconds, which is a narrower thing than memory in general.

Is a speech delay an early sign of dyslexia?

A speech or language delay raises the chance of dyslexia, but it does not settle the question for any one child. A 2016 review in Psychological Bulletin pooled studies of children who had a parent or sibling with dyslexia. As a group those children were later to talk, with the delay still measurable at three and a half, and had weaker vocabulary and grammar before school than other children.

The same review shows why being a late talker is a flag and not a verdict. Across its studies, 45 per cent of the children with a family history of dyslexia went on to meet the criteria for dyslexia, which means more than half did not. A child who talked late may well read without trouble, and talking early does not rule dyslexia out.

By school age, the pattern matters more than the age of the first words. A child in the first years of school who talked late or unclearly, has a relative who struggled with reading, and finds the sounds in words hard is a child to act for. The guide to early intervention for dyslexia covers when to start.

Does every child with dyslexia have all three difficulties?

No. Researchers now describe dyslexia as several risks adding up, not one single cause, and children with dyslexia differ in which spoken language skills are weak. One child may struggle to hear the sounds in words yet name things quickly. Another may read accurately but slowly.

Some children with dyslexia also have a wider difficulty with spoken language, such as following long sentences or learning new words. In one study cited in the 2020 review, about 40 per cent of children with dyslexia did. That is the reason a first look at a child’s reading should also look at their spoken language.

Why does a speech pathologist treat dyslexia?

A speech pathologist treats dyslexia because the skills under it are spoken language skills. Speech sounds, word finding and language development are what speech pathologists are trained in. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association states that speech pathologists play a critical and direct role in the development of literacy in children and adolescents, and that children with a history of spoken language difficulty are at high risk of difficulty learning to read and write.

Dr Lauren Crumlish (PhD) is a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist who works with children and teenagers online. She assesses reading, spelling and the spoken language skills underneath, and teaches from what the assessment finds. Dr Lauren does not diagnose dyslexia: a formal diagnosis is usually made by a psychologist. The first assessment is explained on the page about how the work runs.

What does this mean for dyslexia therapy?

For dyslexia therapy it means the teaching starts with sounds, and each of the three skills changes how the teaching is delivered.

Sounds are taught out loud and tied to letters. AUSPELD’s guide for parents describes effective teaching as explicit and systematic, with the links between sounds and letters taught in a set order.
Slow naming means more practice is planned. A child who is accurate but slow needs many more goes at the same words and patterns before they come quickly. AUSPELD’s guide asks for ample practice and over-learning for this reason.
Weak verbal memory means smaller steps. One new thing at a time, short spoken instructions, and a review of earlier learning at the start of each session, which is also what AUSPELD’s guide recommends.

None of this cures dyslexia, which is lifelong. Reading and spelling improve with explicit teaching. Reading help with Dr Lauren sets out how reading is taught, from the sounds in words through to fluency.

What helps at home with word finding and memory?

Time helps most with word finding. Understood, a not-for-profit for families, notes that children with dyslexia find words more easily when they have longer to answer and are not put on the spot, so wait, and resist finishing the sentence. For memory, give one instruction at a time and ask your child to say it back. The guide to helping a child with dyslexia at home covers reading, spelling and homework.