A lab-controlled simulation of a letter–speech sound binding deficit in dyslexia Sebastián Aravena a,b,c,⇑ , Patrick Snellings a,c , Jurgen Tijms a,b,c , Maurits W. van der Molen a,c a Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1018 XA, The Netherlands b IWAL Institute, Amsterdam 1052 GM, The Netherlands c Amsterdam Center for Learning Disabilities [Expertisecentrum Leerproblemen], Amsterdam 1018 XE, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 2 July 2012 Revised 6 March 2013 Available online 23 May 2013 Keywords: Dyslexia Letter–speech sound binding deficit Artificial orthography Instructional approach Implicit learning Edugames abstract Dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers engaged in a short training aimed at learning eight basic letter–speech sound correspondences within an artificial orthography. We examined whether a letter– speech sound binding deficit is behaviorally detectable within the initial steps of learning a novel script. Both letter knowledge and word reading ability within the artificial script were assessed. An additional goal was to investigate the influence of instructional approach on the initial learning of letter–speech sound correspon- dences. We assigned children from both groups to one of three dif- ferent training conditions: (a) explicit instruction, (b) implicit associative learning within a computer game environment, or (c) a combination of (a) and (b) in which explicit instruction is fol- lowed by implicit learning. Our results indicated that dyslexics were outperformed by the controls on a time-pressured binding task and a word reading task within the artificial orthography, pro- viding empirical support for the view that a letter–speech sound binding deficit is a key factor in dyslexia. A combination of explicit instruction and implicit techniques proved to be a more powerful tool in the initial teaching of letter–sound correspondences than implicit training alone. Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 0022-0965/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.03.009 ⇑ Corresponding author at: IWAL Institute, Amsterdam 1052 GM, The Netherlands. Fax: +31 206864086. E-mail address: s.aravena@uva.nl (S. Aravena). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 115 (2013) 691–707 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Experimental Child Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp