Dyslexia and Visual-Spatial Talents

Abstract

The hypothesis about the association of dyslexia with visual-spatial talents is still not verified. Evidence is inconsistent, ranging from inferior to superior visualspatial abilities in individuals with dyslexia. Using a variety of visual-spatial tasks, this study tested the hypothesis that dyslexia is associated with superior visual-spatial ability. The results suggest that children with dyslexia performed equivalently to the controls on most tasks. On one measure, however, they were superior. They were significantly better than controls on the analytic spatial test. Results also showed that they were worse in solving visual-spatial tasks that include implicit memory.

Dyslexia and Enhanced Visuospatial Ability: A Maltese Study

“…In one such test, the Paper Folding Test (previously used by Ekstrom, French, Harman, & Dermen, 1976), participants were required to predict how a piece of a paper would look, after it had been folded, punched with a hole and unfolded once again. Duranovic et al (2015) identified higher analytical and mental visualisation techniques among students with dyslexia than average readers. Similar skills were identified by other researchers like Brunswick et al (2010) in males with dyslexia who demonstrated superiority at reproducing designs and at recalling the direction of the Queen's head on a stamp.…”

“…Duranovic, Dedeic and Gavrić (2015) assessed whether students with dyslexia (symptomatic) exhibited superior visualisation strategies in comparison to average students (asymptomatic). In one such test, the Paper Folding Test (previously used by Ekstrom, French, Harman, & Dermen, 1976), participants were required to predict how a piece of a paper would look, after it had been folded, punched with a hole and unfolded once again.…”

Complete Issue

“…Aleci and colleagues (2010) have proposed that individuals with dyslexia may also have a general impairment of spatial perception whereby a crowding effect occurs in the reading of texts. However, some studies report that individuals with dyslexia have superior visual-spatial ability (Wang & Yang, 2011) while others suggest that no significant differences exist (Duranovic, Dedeic, & Gavrić, 2015). The research is also rather scant with younger elementary students (age 8 to 10), which was the intended foci age of this research.…”

“…Testing the hypothesis that children with dyslexia have enhanced visual-spatial abilities, Duranovic, Dedeic, and Gavrić (2015) used multiple visual-spatial tasks, including the Vandenberg Test of Mental Rotation (1978), and found no significant differences between groups, which suggests that children with dyslexia have similar visual spatial abilities to unimpaired children. In contrast, Winner et al (2011) found that high school students with dyslexia compared to a non-dyslexic group did not have enhanced visual-spatial skills but rather deficits on many visuospatial tasks.…”

Visuo-Spatial Skills in Atypical Readers

“…Some studies have focused on basic visual perceptual skills using tasks (e.g., Table 14.1) tapping into cognitive processes that require simpler levels of spatial analysis such as recall or recognition of simple patterns in the visual field, detecting collections of similar objects, and so on (Alves & Nakano, 2014;Duranovic, Dedeic, & Gavrić, 2015;Ruffino, Gori, Boccardi, Molteni, & Facoetti, 2014). Others have looked at tasks requiring higher level thinking, creativity or dynamic nonverbal cognition such as rotating objects in the mind, or identifying rapidly Impossible Figures in space (Diehl et al, 2014;Olulade et al, 2012;Winner et al, 2001).…”