The relationship between visuo-spatial attention and nonword reading in developmental dyslexia

Abstract

Focused visuo-spatial attention was studied in 10 developmental dyslexic children with impaired nonword reading, 10 dyslexic children with intact nonword reading, and 12 normally reading children. Reaction times to lateralized visual stimuli in a cued detection task showed that attentional facilitation of the target at the cued location was symmetrical in the three groups. However, dyslexics with impaired nonword reading selectively showed a lack of attentional inhibition for targets at the uncued location in the right visual field. This result was replicated in a second group of 13 dyslexics with impaired nonword reading. Individual differences in the ability of right attentional inhibition across the entire sample of dyslexics accounted for 17% of unique variance in nonword reading accuracy after controlling for individual differences in age, IQ, and phonological skills. A possible explanation based on the role of spatial attention mechanisms in the graphemic parsing process is discussed. Our results suggest that focused visuo-spatial attention may be crucial for nonword decoding.

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.…”

Deployment of spatial attention to words in central and peripheral vision

“…Studies of patients with hemispatial neglect tested with centrally presented stimuli have shown degraded reports of letters in the contralateral side of nonwords but preserved reports of words (Siéroff, Pollatsek, & Posner, 1988). A recent study by Facoetti et al (2006) suggested that part of the nonword reading disability in developmental dyslexia arises from deficient deployment of spatial attention. As suggested by Facoetti et al, these results can be accommodated by a dual-route approach to word reading in which the indirect pathway for sublexical phonological assembly requires attention, whereas the direct lexical-semantic pathway is largely impervious to attentional modulation.…”

Sequential Versus Simultaneous Processing Deficits in Developmental Dyslexia

“…Furthermore, other studies which explicitly reported a phonological processing deficit based their diagnosis upon pseudoword reading difficulties (i.e., decoding or sub-lexical reading difficulties), but pseudoword reading does not only require phonological abilities but also engages visual attention (Bosse et al, 2007;Bosse & Valdois, 2009;Facoetti et al, 2006;Facoetti et al, 2010;Vidyasagar & Pammer, 2010).…”