Reading Disability as a Deficit in Functional Coordination

Perception & Psychophysics

2004

In six experiments in which a binary classification task was used, letter and nonletter (geometrical shapes, pseudoletters, or rotated letters) targets were presented either in isolation or surrounded by a geometrical shape. The surrounding shape could be congruent or incongruent with the target. When the classification required a distinction between letters and nonletters, either explicitly (Experiments 1-3) or implicitly (Experiment 4), a negative congruence effect was obtained for letters, contrasting with a regular, positive congruence effect for nonletters. When no distinction was to be made, letters and nonletters invariably showed a positive congruence effect (Experiments 5 and 6). In particular, between Experiments 1-4 and Experiments 5 and 6, the occurrence of negative or positive congruence effects for the same stimuli depended on the task. Feature interaction, target selection, and response competition explanations were tested against a feature integration approach. The results are explained in terms of different feature integration strategies for letters and nonletters. CONGRUENCE IN LETTERS AND SHAPES909 sults of even these earliest studies cannot be understood fully on the basis of feature interaction alone. For instance, in Estes (1982), the effect of target-flanker similarity was minimal at an intermediate degree of similarity, a result Estes ascribed to the mediation of higher order processes. These processes are likely to involve task-specific factors.In particular, we may consider the role of task-specific factors in attentional target selection. Distractor information competes for selection when the perceiver is allocating attention to the target. This effect, too, will be stronger the more similar in shape the nontarget is to the target. When the stimulus is complex, the task is difficult, and distractors competing for attention may sometimes have to be suppressed while a target is selected. This provides another possible source of negative congruence effects. Accordingly, the time it takes to classify a target is longer if it is surrounded by nontargets of similar shape than if it is surrounded by ones of different shape (Bavelier, Deruelle, & Proksch, 2000;Briand, 1994;van Leeuwen & Bakker, 1995). These effects contrast with those usually obtained in more simple displays, where the time it takes to classify a target is shorter when congruent distractors surround it than when it is surrounded by incongruent ones. The latter, positive congruence effects have been studied extensively and are generally attributed to competition of late response-related processes (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974). According to the literature, these effects are characteristic of simple stimuli, because when the task is easy (Lavie, 1995), attention recruited for feature integration (Treisman & Gelade, 1980) spills over to irrelevant stimulus attributes. When these call for a response opposite to that of the target, response competition will result.In sum, the effects of irrelevant surrounding information are commonly ex...

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

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confidence: 99%

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Negative and positive congruence effects in letters and shapes

Leeuwen

Perception & Psychophysics

2004

“…Note that the visual routines supporting object recognition that humans have acquired during evolution can actually impede reading acquisition. Mirror invariance (Pegado, Nakamura, & Hannagan, 2014) or symmetry generalisation (Lachmann, 2002), for instance, is the ability to quickly identify visual stimuli irrespective of their (e.g. leftright) orientation.…”

Section: Mirror Invariancementioning

confidence: 99%

Distinguishing cause from effect – many deficits associated with developmental dyslexia may be a consequence of reduced and suboptimal reading experience

Huettig

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

Reis

et al. 2017

(2018) Distinguishing cause from effect -many deficits associated with developmental dyslexia may be a consequence of reduced and suboptimal reading experience, Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 33:3, 333-350, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2017 The cause of developmental dyslexia is still unknown despite decades of intense research. Many causal explanations have been proposed, based on the range of impairments displayed by affected individuals. Here we draw attention to the fact that many of these impairments are also shown by illiterate individuals who have not received any or very little reading instruction. We suggest that this fact may not be coincidental and that the performance differences of both illiterates and individuals with dyslexia compared to literate controls are, to a substantial extent, secondary consequences of either reduced or suboptimal reading experience or a combination of both. The search for the primary causes of reading impairments will make progress if the consequences of quantitative and qualitative differences in reading experience are better taken into account and not mistaken for the causes of reading disorders. We close by providing four recommendations for future research.ARTICLE HISTORY

“…Concerning the former, the ISE in children is of interest in the context of noise effects on children's cognitive development. Verbal short-term memory is of major importance for the acquisition of oral and written language in children (Baddeley, 2003a;Baddeley, Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998;Lachmann, 2002;Steinbrink & Klatte, 2008). The importance of short-term memory in language and reading acquisition on the one hand and its sensitivity to noise-induced disruption on the other hand leads to the prediction that permanent exposure to irrelevant sounds of even moderate intensity may cause enduring deficits in these developmental domains.…”

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confidence: 99%

The irrelevant sound effect in short-term memory: Is there developmental change?

Klatte

European Journal of Cognitive Psychology

Schlittmeier

et al. 2010

With two experiments, effects of irrelevant speech and classroom noise on serial recall of common nouns presented pictorially were investigated in children and adults. Experiment 1 used fixed list lengths for children (first graders) and adults. Experiment 2 used list lengths adjusted to participants' (secondÁthird graders, adults) individual spans. In both experiments, children and adults were equally impaired by irrelevant speech. This contrasts with a related study (differences in methodology) by Elliott (2002), who reported severe increase in the detrimental impact of irrelevant speech with decreasing age. In both experiments, classroom noise had no effect in overall analyses. For Experiment 1, however, separate group analyses revealed impairment in children. Results suggest that effects of irrelevant sounds on serial recall stem from two separate mechanisms: Specific interference due to the sounds' automatic access to short-term memory, and/or attention capture. Only for the latter there is developmental change.