Evidence for a differential interference of noise in sub-lexical and lexical reading routes in healthy participants and dyslexics

Abstract

The ineffective exclusion of surrounding noise has been proposed to underlie the reading deficits in developmental dyslexia. However, previous studies supporting this hypothesis focused on low-level visual tasks, providing only an indirect link of noise interference on reading processes. In this study, we investigated the effect of noise on regular, irregular, and pseudoword reading in 23 dyslexic children and 26 age- and IQ-matched controls, by applying the white noise displays typically used to validate this theory to a lexical decision task. Reading performance and eye movements were measured. Results showed that white noise did not consistently affect dyslexic readers more than typical readers. Noise affected more dyslexic than typical readers in terms of reading accuracy, but it affected more typical than dyslexic readers in terms of response time and eye movements (number of fixations and regressions). Furthermore, in typical readers, noise affected more the speed of reading of pseudowords than real words. These results suggest a particular impact of noise on the sub-lexical reading route where attention has to be deployed to individual letters. The use of a lexical route would reduce the effect of noise. A differential impact of noise between words and pseudowords may therefore not be evident in dyslexic children if they are not yet proficient in using the lexical route. These findings indicate that the type of reading stimuli and consequent reading strategies play an important role in determining the effects of noise interference in reading processing and should be taken into account by further studies.

Fluency and Reading Comprehension in Typical Readers and Dyslexic Readers, volume II

“…Developmental dyslexia (DD) is characterized by a reading impairment, despite normal intelligence and adequate reading instruction. Although phonological processing deficits are well established as core deficits in DD (Snowling, 1981;, it has been suggested that attentional impairments may also contribute to the pathophysiology of this condition (Cestnick and Coltheart, 1999;Vidyasagar, 1999Vidyasagar, , 2019Facoetti et al, 2005Facoetti et al, , 2006Vidyasagar and Pammer, 2010;Pina Rodrigues et al, 2017a types of attention deficits have been reported in DD: narrowed visual attentional window and reduced visual attention span ; stronger effects of crowding (Bouma and Legein, 1977;Spinelli et al, 2002;Pernet et al, 2006;Moores et al, 2011;Callens et al, 2013); noise exclusion deficits (Sperling et al, 2005(Sperling et al, , 2006Pina Rodrigues et al, 2017a); and, particularly relevant for this study, abnormal spatial distribution of attention (Facoetti and Turatto, 2000;Facoetti and Molteni, 2001) and impaired attention orienting (Brannan and Williams, 1987;Facoetti et al, 2000bFacoetti et al, , 2003aFacoetti et al, , 2006Facoetti and Molteni, 2001;Kinsey et al, 2004;Valdois et al, 2004;Roach and Hogben, 2008;Vidyasagar and Pammer, 2010;Franceschini et al, 2012;Gabrieli and Norton, 2012). Moreover, it has been shown that prereading visuo-attentional skills can predict reading impairments (Franceschini et al, 2012;Carroll et al, 2016;Valdois et al, 2019) and that attentional training is able to improve reading in dyslexics (Franceschini et al, 2013), suggesting a causal link between attention...…”

Disrupted Spatial Organization of Cued Exogenous Attention Persists Into Adulthood in Developmental Dyslexia

“…Although phonological processing deficits are well established as core deficits in DD ( Snowling, 1981 ; Ziegler and Goswami, 2005 ), it has been suggested that attentional impairments may also contribute to the pathophysiology of this condition ( Cestnick and Coltheart, 1999 ; Vidyasagar, 1999 , 2019 ; Hari and Renvall, 2001 ; Facoetti et al, 2005 , 2006 ; Bosse et al, 2007 ; Vidyasagar and Pammer, 2010 ; Pina Rodrigues et al, 2017a ). Accordingly, several types of attention deficits have been reported in DD: narrowed visual attentional window and reduced visual attention span ( Bosse et al, 2007 ); stronger effects of crowding ( Bouma and Legein, 1977 ; Spinelli et al, 2002 ; Pernet et al, 2006 ; Martelli et al, 2009 ; Moores et al, 2011 ; Callens et al, 2013 ); noise exclusion deficits ( Sperling et al, 2005 , 2006 ; Pina Rodrigues et al, 2017a ); and, particularly relevant for this study, abnormal spatial distribution of attention ( Facoetti and Turatto, 2000 ; Facoetti and Molteni, 2001 ) and impaired attention orienting ( Brannan and Williams, 1987 ; Facoetti et al, 2000b , 2003a , 2006 ; Facoetti and Molteni, 2001 ; Hari and Renvall, 2001 ; Kinsey et al, 2004 ; Valdois et al, 2004 ; Roach and Hogben, 2008 ; Vidyasagar and Pammer, 2010 ; Franceschini et al, 2012 ; Gabrieli and Norton, 2012 ). Moreover, it has been shown that prereading visuo-attentional skills can predict reading impairments ( Franceschini et al, 2012 ; Carroll et al, 2016 ; Valdois et al, 2019 ) and that attentional training is able to improve reading in dyslexics ( Franceschini et al, 2013 ), suggesting a causal link between attentional deficits and reading impairments.…”