Abstract
Pattern-related visual stress (PRVS) is a form of sensory hypersensitivity that some people experience when viewing high contrast repeating patterns, notably alternating dark and light stripes. Those susceptible to PRVS typically have a strong aversion to such stimuli, and this is often accompanied by experiences of visual discomfort and disturbance. The patterns most likely to elicit symptoms of PRVS have a square-wave grating configuration of spatial frequency ~3 cycles/degree. Such stimuli are characteristic of printed text in which lines of words and the spaces between them present a high contrast grating-like stimulus. Consequently, much printed reading material has the potential to elicit PRVS that may impair reading performance, and this problem appears to be common in individuals with reading difficulties including dyslexia. However, the manner in which PRVS affects reading ability is unknown. One possibility is that the early sensory visual stress may interfere with the later cognitive word recognition stage of the reading process, resulting in reading performance that is slower and/or less accurate. To explore the association of PRVS with word recognition ability, lexical decision performance (speed and accuracy) to words and pronounceable non-words was measured in two groups of adults, having low and high susceptibility to PRVS. Results showed that lexical decisions were generally faster but less accurate in high-PRVS, and also that high-PRVS participants made decisions significantly faster for words than for non-words, revealing a strong lexicality effect that was not present in low-PRVS. These findings are novel and, as yet, unconfirmed by other studies.
Highlights
Reading is a complex and demanding activity, requiring efficient processing and integration of visual, phonological and semantic information with eye movement control and coordination
The present study examines a specific aspect of the interaction between stages 1 and 2 of this conceptual model of reading; that is the possible effect of the visual sensory phenomenon known as pattern-related visual stress on the cognitive process of word recognition as represented by performance on a visual lexical decision task
The aim of the present study is to investigate whether two participant groups, having low and high susceptibility to patternrelated visual stress, differ in their abilities to discriminate between words and non-words in a visual lexical decision task
Summary
Reading is a complex and demanding activity, requiring efficient processing and integration of visual, phonological and semantic information with eye movement control and coordination. The Reading Process The process of reading text may be conceived as follows: (1) the reader selects and fixes on a word, (2) the word (or a group of words around fixation—the “perceptual span”) is decoded to determine whether it can be identified and recognized as meaningful, the decoded word/span representation is conveyed to working memory pending the decoding of further words/spans, (3) saccadic eye movements bring about a change in fixation to select the word/group of interest, steps (1)–(3) are repeated. In spite of its simplicity, this intuitive 3-stage description captures the essence of some influential models of reading that recognize the need to combine word recognition with visual attention and eye movements to create fluency for meaningful interpretation of text (e.g., Reichle et al, 2003; Engbert et al, 2005; Rayner and Reichle, 2010)
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