■ Auditory Temporal Processing Skills in Musicians with Dyslexia Paula Bishop-Liebler 1 * , Graham Welch 1 , Martina Huss 2 , Jennifer M. Thomson 3 and Usha Goswami 2 1 International Music Education Research Centre, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK 2 Centre for Neuroscience in Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 3 Department of Human Communication Sciences, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK The core cognitive difficulty in developmental dyslexia involves phonological processing, but adults and children with dyslexia also have sensory impairments. Impairments in basic auditory processing show particular links with phonological impairments, and recent studies with dyslexic children across languages reveal a relationship between auditory temporal processing and sensitivity to rhythmic timing and speech rhythm. As rhythm is explicit in music, musical training might have a beneficial effect on the auditory perception of acoustic cues to rhythm in dyslexia. Here we took advantage of the presence of musicians with and without dyslexia in musical conservatoires, comparing their auditory temporal processing abilities with those of dyslexic non-musicians matched for cognitive ability. Musicians with dyslexia showed equivalent auditory sensitivity to musicians without dyslexia and also showed equivalent rhythm perception. The data support the view that extensive rhythmic experience initiated during childhood (here in the form of music training) can affect basic auditory processing skills which are found to be deficient in individuals with dyslexia. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords: dyslexia; music; rhythm; phonology; reading The potential benefits of musical training for remediating language difficulties in childhood have become a recent focus of research interest (e.g. Kraus & Chandrasekaran, 2010). As difficulties with the phonological aspects of language usually lead to reading difficulties, researchers have also been interested in whether musical training can help to remediate the difficulties with written language shown by individuals with developmental dyslexia (e.g. Forgeard et al., 2008; Overy, 2003; Tallal & Gaab, 2006). In particular, musical training seems a priori likely to improve auditory processing skills. Studies of musically trained adults have shown significant effects on pitch processing, for example using both behavioural and neural measures (e.g. Wong, Skoe, Russo, Dees, & Kraus, 2007). Here we take advantage of the ‘natural’ experimental setting offered by the presence of dyslexic students in musical conservatoires in the United Kingdom to investigate whether musical training improves auditory processing in develop- mental dyslexia. * Correspondence to: Paula Bishop-Liebler, International Music Education Research Centre, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK. E-mail: bishop_liebler@yahoo.com Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DYSLEXIA 20: 261–279 (2014) DYSLEXIA Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/dys.1479