Humans’ propensity to acquire literacy relates to several factors, including the ability to understand speech in noise (SiN). Still, the nature of the relation between reading and SiN perception abilities remains poorly understood. Here, we dissect the interplay between (1) reading abilities, (2) classical behavioral predictors of reading (phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid automatized naming), and (3) electrophysiological markers of SiN perception in 99 elementary school children (26 with dyslexia). We demonstrate that, in typical readers, cortical representation of the phrasal content of SiN relates to the degree of development of the lexical (but not sublexical) reading strategy. In contrast, classical behavioral predictors of reading abilities and the ability to benefit from visual speech to represent the syllabic content of SiN account for global reading performance (i.e., speed and accuracy of lexical and sublexical reading). In individuals with dyslexia, we found preserved integration of visual speech information to optimize processing of syntactic information but not to sustain acoustic/phonemic processing. Finally, within children with dyslexia, measures of cortical representation of the phrasal content of SiN were negatively related to reading speed and positively related to the compromise between reading precision and reading speed, potentially owing to compensatory attentional mechanisms. These results clarify the nature of the relation between SiN perception and reading abilities in typical child readers and children with dyslexia and identify novel electrophysiological markers of emergent literacy.

人类获得识字的倾向与几个因素有关，包括理解噪声中语音（SiN）的能力。尽管如此，阅读与SiN感知能力之间关系的性质仍然知之甚少。在这里，我们剖析了99名小学儿童（1）阅读能力，（2）阅读的经典行为预测指标（语音意识，语音记忆和快速自动命名）与（3）SiN感知的电生理标志之间的相互作用（26患有阅读障碍）。我们证明，在典型的读者中，SiN短语内容的皮层表示与词汇（而非亚词汇）阅读策略的发展程度有关。相反，阅读能力和从视觉语音中受益以代表SiN的音节内容的经典行为预测指标说明了整体阅读性能（即词汇和次词汇阅读的速度和准确性）。在患有阅读障碍的个体中，我们发现保留了视觉语音信息的整合，以优化句法信息的处理，但不能维持声学/音位处理。最后，在患有阅读障碍的儿童中，SiN短语含量的皮质表示测量与阅读速度呈负相关，与阅读精度与阅读速度之间的折衷呈正相关，这可能是由于补偿性注意机制所致。