Is excessive visual crowding causally linked to developmental dyslexia?

NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA

卷:130

Article

Bertoni, Sara¹  Franceschini, Sandro¹  Ronconi, Luca^2,3  Gori, Simone⁴  Facoetti, Andrea¹ 

[1] Univ Padua, Dept Gen Psychol, Dev & Cognit Neurosci Lab, I-35131 Padua, Italy

[2] Univ Trento, Ctr Mind Brain Sci CIMeC, I-38068 Rovereto, Italy

[3] Sci Inst E Medea, Child Psychopathol Unit, I-23842 Bosisio Parini, Lecco, Italy

[4] Univ Bergamo, Dept Human & Social Sci, I-24129 Bergamo, Italy

关键词: Reading disability;    Visual perception;    Spatial attention;    Dyslexia remediation;    Dyslexia predictors;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.04.018

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

For about 10% of children reading acquisition is extremely difficult because they are affected by a heritable neurobiological disorder called developmental dyslexia (DD), mainly associated to an auditory-phonological disorder. Visual crowding is a universal phenomenon that impairs the recognition of stimuli in clutter, such as a letter in a word or a word in a text. Several studies have shown an excessive crowding in individuals with DD, but the causal link between excessive crowding and DD is not yet clearly established. An excessive crowding might be, indeed, a simple effect of DD due to reduced reading experience. The results of five experiments in 181 children reveal that: (i) an excessive crowding only at unattended locations characterizes an unselected group of children with DD (Experiment 1); (ii) an extra-large spaced text increases reading accuracy by reducing crowding in an unselected group of children with DD (Experiment 2); (iii) efficient attentional action video game trainings reduce crowding and accelerate reading speed in two unselected groups of children with DD (Experiment 3 and 4), and; (iv) pre-reading crowding longitudinally predicts future poor readers (Experiment 5). Our results show multiple causal links between visual crowding and learning to read. These findings provide new insights for a more efficient remediation and prevention for DD.

【 授权许可】

Free