Holistic word processing in dyslexia

Abstract

People with dyslexia have difficulty learning to read and many lack fluent word recognition as adults. In a novel task that borrows elements of the ‘word superiority’ and ‘word inversion’ paradigms, we investigate whether holistic word recognition is impaired in dyslexia. In Experiment 1 students with dyslexia and controls judged the similarity of pairs of 6- and 7-letter words or pairs of words whose letters had been partially jumbled. The stimuli were presented in both upright and inverted form with orthographic regularity and orientation randomized from trial to trial. While both groups showed sensitivity to orthographic regularity, both word inversion and letter jumbling were more detrimental to skilled than dyslexic readers supporting the idea that the latter may read in a more analytic fashion. Experiment 2 employed the same task but using shorter, 4- and 5-letter words and a design where orthographic regularity and stimuli orientation was held constant within experimental blocks to encourage the use of either holistic or analytic processing. While there was no difference in reaction time between the dyslexic and control groups for inverted stimuli, the students with dyslexia were significantly slower than controls for upright stimuli. These findings suggest that holistic word recognition, which is largely based on the detection of orthographic regularity, is impaired in dyslexia.

Holistic Processing of Faces and Words Predicts Reading Accuracy and Speed in Dyslexic Readers

“…Turning to group differences we 8 find that, while dyslexic participants are slower than controls overall there is no difference in 9 sensitivity between the groups. This is consistent with findings from our previous research 10 (Conway et al, 2017) which reports that dyslexic participants are slower to respond than 11 typical readers but show comparable sensitivity in a novel non-reading task that encompasses 12 aspects of the 'word superiority' and 'word inversion' paradigms. 13 We also find in the current study, and somewhat unexpectedly, that dyslexic participants 14…”

“…as an index of how much the irrelevant information interferes with the observers' judgement 7 (Wong et al, 2011). Here we follow this approach but, in line with (Conway et al, 2017;8 Wong, Wong, Lui, Ng, & Ngan, 2019), we use the ratio of RT on incongruent and congruent 9 trials as a measure of the congruency effect because the absolute difference in RT between 10 the dyslexic and control groups is substantial as seen in Figure 4. In line with (Wong et al, 11 2011) the congruency effect appears more marked for aligned than for misaligned trials, 12 Figure 5B.…”

Holistic processing of Chinese characters in college students with dyslexia

“…Indeed, other visual perceptual abnormalities in word recognition has been also been found in people with developmental dyslexia. For example, the inversion and word superiority effects that have been commonly observes in typical readers were absent or reduced in dyslexic readers 31 .…”

Holistic word processing is correlated with efficiency in visual word recognition

“…In the inversion effect, for example, visual word recognition is impaired when words are presented inverted rather than upright (e.g., Carlos, Hirshorn, Durisko, Fiez, & Coutanche, 2019). More important, just like faces, sensitivity to distortions of the spatial relationship between parts (i.e., by replacing one letter for another, or by jittering the letters in a word) is larger in upright than in inverted words (Conway, Brady, & Misra, 2017;Wong, Wong, Lui, Ng, & Ngan, 2019). Additionally, Wong et al (2019) showed that the word-inversion effect was larger for configural distortions (letter jittering) than for featural ones (line thickness), as happens for faces (Rakover, 2013).…”

“…For example, the word-composite effect is larger in native readers that in non-native ones (Wong et al, 2011a(Wong et al, , b, 2012a. Conway et al (2017) also suggested that the word-inversion effect is related to reading skills, given that typical readers showed a larger word-inversion effect than dyslexic (and hence, less efficient) readers. Furthermore, sensitivity to configural distortions indicated by the inversion effect was larger for observers who were readers than non-readers of the script at test (Wong et al, 2019; Experiment 1).…”