Abstract
We compared the performance of dyslexic and typical readers on two perceptual tasks, the Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Task and the Holistic Word Processing Task. Both yield a metric of holistic processing that captures the extent to which participants automatically attend to information that is spatially nearby but irrelevant to the task at hand. Our results show, for the first time, that holistic processing of faces is comparable in dyslexic and typical readers but that dyslexic readers show greater holistic processing of words. Remarkably, we show that these metrics predict the performance of dyslexic readers on a standardized reading task, with more holistic processing in both tasks associated with higher accuracy and speed. In contrast, a more holistic style on the words task predicts less accurate reading of both words and pseudowords for typical readers. We discuss how these findings may guide our conceptualization of the visual deficit in dyslexia.
Highlights
Developmental dyslexia is characterised by difficulties in learning to read that are unexpected in light of a child’s cognitive abilities and educational opportunities [1]
We compared the performance of college students with dyslexia and age matched typical readers on two perceptual tasks, the Vanderbilt Holistic Face Processing Task (VHFPT) and the Holistic Word Processing Task (HWPT), that each yield a measure of holistic processing known as the ‘congruency effect’
We show that these measures of holistic processing predict performance on a standardized reading task, the WIAT-3, with a more holistic style in both the faces and words task associated with better reading scores—more accurate and faster reading of both words and pseudowords— for dyslexic readers
Summary
Developmental dyslexia is characterised by difficulties in learning to read that are unexpected in light of a child’s cognitive abilities and educational opportunities [1]. The view that visual problems in dyslexia are secondary to a ‘core phonological deficit’ [7] endures, in part, because it resonates with the dual-route theory of reading [8] By this account, learning to read involves the acquisition of distinct phonological and orthographic skills. Orthographic coding refers to the representation of the visual form of words– including groupings of letters that signal spelling regularities–and, in time, enables word recognition without the need to access phonological information at the pre-lexical level [9]. This lexical route to word sounds is assumed to underlie fluency.
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