Children with developmental dyslexia show a left visual “minineglect”

Abstract

We investigated the performance of children with developmental dyslexia on a visual line bisection task. Dyslexic children did not show the overestimation of the left visual field (pseudoneglect) characteristic of normal adult vision. These results suggest that children with developmental dyslexia present selective deficits in visual attention, probably involving neural structures located in the right posterior parietal cortex.

Stimulus effects on cancellation task performance in children with and without dyslexia

“…This result is consistent with the previous findings (Wang, Huang, & Huang, 2006) for the performance of children without learning disabilities. Sireteanu et al (2005) found that adults and schoolchildren without dyslexia showed significant leftward deviations in line-bisection tasks, but this pattern has not been found in children with dyslexia. They concluded that the significant left visual "minineglect" was linked to right parietal deficits found in dyslexic participants.…”

“…The form effects Sireteanu et al, 2005). Adults without visuospatial deficits tend to overestimate the left visual field because of the advantage of right hemispheric processing; however, individuals with hemineglect usually ignore their left extrapersonal space (Halligan & Marshall, 1992), and those with dyslexia process stimuli in the left visual field more slowly (Hari, Renvall, & Tanskanen, 2001).…”

“…Adults without visuospatial deficits tend to overestimate the left visual field because of the advantage of right hemispheric processing; however, individuals with hemineglect usually ignore their left extrapersonal space (Halligan & Marshall, 1992), and those with dyslexia process stimuli in the left visual field more slowly (Hari, Renvall, & Tanskanen, 2001). In previous studies (Hari et al, 2001;Roeltgen & Roeltgen, 1990;Sireteanu et al, 2005), it has been suggested that people with developmental dyslexia showed a left "minineglect"-an immature attention pattern due to the right parietal lobe hypofunction caused by a magnocellular deficit. However, this notion needs to be further clarified by examining spatial organization in visual attention tasks.…”

“…People with hemineglect often show reduced awareness of stimuli on their left side. Some studies have proposed that children with dyslexia often have insufficient processing of the stimulus on the left visual field on cued tasks (Heiervang & Hugdahl, 2003) or on line-bisection tasks (Sireteanu, Goertz, Bachert, & Wandert, 2005). It is widely accepted that children with dyslexia may have visual attention deficits (Stein & Walsh, 1997;Vidyasagar & Pammer, 1999).…”

Individual Differences in Adult Reading Are Associated with Left Temporo-parietal to Dorsal Striatal Functional Connectivity

“…The most prominent findings here were aberrant connectivity between anterior caudate and a TPJ subregion functionally connected to DAN regions such as the intraparietal sulcus, putative human frontal eye fields, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Many studies have highlighted abnormalities in visuospatial attention in RD (Facoetti and Molteni 2001;Hari et al 2001;Facoetti et al 2003Facoetti et al , 2006Sireteanu et al 2005;Liddle et al 2009;Facoetti, Corradi et al 2010;Facoetti, Trussardi et al 2010). Converging evidence also suggests that difficulties in visuospatial attention are an important predictor of reading abilities (Valdois et al 2004;Shaywitz and Shaywitz 2008;Franceschini et al 2012Franceschini et al , 2013.…”