Annals of Dyslexia最新文献

Given the increased evidence suggesting the presence of binocular coordination deficits in dyslexia, investigations of binocular eye movements are beneficial to clarify the underlying causes of reading difficulties. This systematic review aims to (a) synthesize the literature through the examination of binocular coordination in children with dyslexia by describing the normative development of stable binocular control and (b) outline future directions. Boolean expressions in the PubMed search were used to define papers. Following a literature search and selection process, 25 papers were included. Studies using binocular eye tracking during linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks in children with dyslexia and typical development 5–17 years of age are reviewed. The studies reviewed provided consistent evidence of poor binocular coordination in children with dyslexia, but the results associated with different task characteristics were less consistent. The relation between binocular coordination deficits and reading difficulties needs to be further elucidated in longitudinal studies which may provide future treatments targeting the binocular viewing system in dyslexia.

The extent to which impaired visual and phonological mechanisms may contribute to the manifestation of developmental dyslexia across orthographies of varying depth has yet to be fully established. By adopting a cross-linguistic approach, the current study aimed to explore the nature of visual and phonological processing in developmental dyslexic readers of shallow (Italian) and deep (English) orthographies, and specifically the characterisation of visual processing deficits in relation to orthographic depth. To achieve this aim, we administered a battery of non-reading visual and phonological tasks. Developmental dyslexics performed worse than typically developing readers on all visual and phonological tasks. Critically, readers of the shallow orthography were disproportionately impaired on visual processing tasks. Our results suggest that the impaired reading and associated deficits observed in developmental dyslexia are anchored by dual impairments to visual and phonological mechanisms that underpin reading, with the magnitude of the visual deficit varying according to orthographic depth.

A dyslexia diagnosis in Denmark can have significant consequences for individuals, as support is not available to others with reading difficulties. Currently, the diagnosis is given solely on the basis of an electronically administered test consisting of two tasks assessing grapheme-phoneme correspondences. To examine whether the Danish diagnostic test is sufficient to identify university students with dyslexia, we compared the performance of 239 Danish university students who reported literacy difficulties and were tested for dyslexia with the Danish diagnostic test on three word-level tests (low-frequency word reading, high-frequency word reading and spelling to dictation) with the performance of separate control groups for each test: 220, 212 and 218 students, respectively. The results showed that 61% of students labelled “not dyslexic” by the Danish diagnostic test performed significantly worse than controls on at least two out of three word-level tests. In terms of self-report of literacy difficulties, students labelled “not dyslexic” by the diagnostic test were indistinguishable from those labelled “dyslexic.” These findings suggest that the current method of diagnosing dyslexia in Denmark is too narrow and that adding a few simple tests of word reading and spelling would minimize the risk of overlooking students in need of literacy support.

The purpose of this post hoc analysis was to analyze if pre-intervention word reading skills contributed to intervention response on reading comprehension outcomes. High school students with reading difficulties were randomized to a business as usual (BaU) or treatment condition that provided 2 years of an intensive, multicomponent word reading and reading comprehension intervention. Participants were assessed on measures of word reading and reading comprehension for pretest and reading comprehension only for posttest. Findings revealed no statistically significant differences with word-level fluency modeled as a continuous variable between treatment and control on reading comprehension. Regardless of assignment to condition, higher word-level fluency scores predicted higher posttest outcomes on years 1 and 2 reading comprehension scores.

The study presents the first systematic comparison of the global reading processes via scanpath analysis in Russian-speaking children with and without reading difficulties. First, we compared basic eye-movement characteristics in reading sentences in two groups of children in grades 1 to 5 (N = 72 in high risk of developmental dyslexia group and N = 72 in the control group). Next, using the scanpath method, we investigated which global reading processes these children adopt to read the entire sentence and how these processes differ between the groups. Finally, we were interested in the timeframe of the change in the global reading processes from the 1st to the 5th grades for both groups. We found that the main difference in word-level measures between groups was the reading speed reflected in fixation durations. However, the examination of the five identified global reading processes revealed qualitative similarities in reading patterns between groups. Children in the control group progressed quickly and by the 4th grade engaged in an adult-like fluent reading process. The high-risk group started with the beginner reading process, then similar to first graders in the control group, engaged mostly in the intermediate and upper-intermediate reading processes in 2nd to 4th grades. They reach the advanced process in the 5th grade, the same pattern preferred by the control group second graders. Overall, the scanpath analysis reveals that although there are quantitative differences in the word-level eye-tracking measures between groups, qualitatively children in the high-risk group read on par with typically developing peers but with a 3-year reading delay.

Dyslexic children often fail to correct errors while reading aloud, and dyslexic adolescents and adults exhibit lower amplitudes of the error-related negativity (ERN)—the neural response to errors—than typical readers during silent reading. Past researchers therefore suggested that dyslexia may arise from a faulty error detection mechanism that interferes with orthographic learning and text comprehension. An alternative possibility is that comprehension difficulty in dyslexics is primarily a downstream effect of low-quality lexical representations—that is, poor word knowledge. On this view, the attenuated ERN in dyslexics is a byproduct, rather than a source, of underdeveloped orthographic knowledge. Because the second view implies a direct association of the error response with comprehension skill in populations of all ability levels, the present study evaluates these alternatives through a reanalysis of behavioral and neural data from 31 typical adult readers. If it is true that faulty error processing can manifest as dyslexia, a model in which error monitoring contributes directly to comprehension should outperform a model in which it does not. ERNs recorded during spelling judgments were used as a measure of error detection aptitude in path analyses of reading comprehension. The data were better fit by a model in which error detection aptitude was a consequence of word knowledge than a model in which it contributed directly to comprehension. The findings challenge the notion that comprehension difficulty in dyslexics is attributable to error processing deficits and are consistent with the hypothesis that comprehension difficulty in dyslexics is partially attributable to low-quality word knowledge.

Conversations about the nature of dyslexia and how dyslexia impacts reading and listening comprehension get to the heart of classification and identification models of dyslexia. Recently, this conversation has been expanded to include efforts to estimate the prevalence of dyslexia in the population through the introduction of a discrepancy index of listening comprehension and reading comprehension. This discrepancy index was proposed to serve as a proxy for dyslexia when estimating its prevalence in the population. Individuals whose reading comprehension is considerably lower than their listening comprehension are thought to exhibit unexpected reading deficits. However, the index could underrepresent certain groups within the population. The current study explored this possibility using data from a sample of 4078 public-school students. We hypothesized that students from historically marginalized or otherwise disenfranchised groups (i.e., poor and minority groups) would be less likely to have a positive listening comprehension — reading comprehension (LC-RC) discrepancy index. Based on the results of multilevel linear mixed effect modeling, socioeconomic status (SES) contributed to differential performance on the discrepancy index when it was calculated using residual scores. Moreover, African American students were identified as having a reliably lower discrepancy index regardless of how it was calculated. It appears that this index, which only looks at the comprehension of language and not production, may, in fact, disadvantage students for whom oral language production differs from General American English (GAE). These outcomes suggest that this measure may lack the sensitivity to identify bidialectal students with dyslexia.

The use of adequate reading comprehension strategies is important to read efficiently. Students with dyslexia not only read slower and less accurately, they also use fewer reading comprehension strategies. To compensate for their decoding problems, they often receive audio-support (narration written text). However, audio-support linearly guides readers from beginning to end through texts, possibly hindering the use of reading comprehension strategies in expository texts and negatively impacting reading time and reading comprehension performance. We examined to what extent audio-support affects reading comprehension strategies, reading times, and reading comprehension performance in 21 secondary school students with dyslexia and 22 typically developing controls. Participants were provided with three types of assignments (summarizing, open-ended questions, statement questions) in each condition (written text with and without audio-support). SMI RED-500 eye tracker captured eye movements during reading. The standard deviation of the weighted fixation duration times on the three paragraphs was considered indicative of the disparity of readers’ attention within the text. Following a discrimination based on experts’ reading behavior and hand-coded validation, these scores visualized whether students used the intensive reading strategy (reading whole text) or selective reading strategy (focusing on part of the text). In open-ended assignments, students divided their attention more over the whole text instead of focusing on one specific part when audio was added. In addition, audio-support increased reading time in students with and without dyslexia in most tasks, while in neither of the tasks audio-support affected reading comprehension performance. Audio-support impacts reading comprehension strategy and reading time in all students.

Beyond the established difficulties of individuals with dyslexia in word recognition and spelling, it remains unclear how severe their difficulties in comprehension are. To examine this, we performed a meta-analytic review. A random-effects model analysis of data from 76 studies revealed a large deficit in reading comprehension in individuals with dyslexia compared to their chronological-age (CA) controls (g = 1.43) and a smaller one compared to their reading-level (RL) matched controls (g = 0.64). Individuals with dyslexia also differed significantly from their CA controls in listening comprehension (g = 0.43). Results further showed significant heterogeneity in the effect sizes that was partly explained by orthographic consistency (the deficits were larger in languages with low orthographic consistency) and vocabulary matching (the deficits were larger in studies in which the groups were not matched on vocabulary). These findings suggest, first, that individuals with dyslexia experience significant difficulties in both reading and listening comprehension, but the effect sizes are smaller than those reported in the literature for word reading and spelling. Second, our findings suggest that the deficits in reading comprehension are likely a combination of deficits in both decoding and oral language skills.

Research has shown improved reading following visual magnocellular training in individuals with dyslexia. Many studies have demonstrated how the magnocellular pathway controls visual spatial attention. Therefore, we have investigated the relationship between magnocellular pathway and visual spatial attention deficits in dyslexia in order to better understand how magnocellular-based interventions may help children to learn to read. Magnocellular function, visual spatial attention, and reading abilities of thirty elementary school students with dyslexia, aged between 8 and 10, were measured. The experimental group received magnocellular-based visual motion training for 12 sessions, while the control group received neutral sessions. All tests were repeated at the end of the training and after 1 month. The magnocellular functioning, visual spatial attention, and reading abilities of the experimental group improved significantly compared to the controls. Additionally, improvement in reaction time of invalid conditions predicted improvements in saccadic eye movements. We conclude that visual magnocellular training improved saccadic eye movement control, visual spatial orientation, and reading ability.