Abstract

Previous research shows that dyslexic readers are impaired in their recognition of faces and other complex objects, and show hypoactivation in ventral visual stream regions that support word and object recognition. Responses of these brain regions are shaped by visual statistical learning. If such learning is compromised, people should be less sensitive to statistically likely feature combinations in words and other objects, and impaired visual word and object recognition should be expected. We therefore tested whether people with dyslexia showed diminished capability for visual statistical learning. Matched dyslexic and typical readers participated in tests of visual statistical learning of pairs of novel shapes that frequently appeared together. Dyslexic readers on average recognized fewer pairs than typical readers, indicating some problems with visual statistical learning. These group differences were not accounted for by differences in intelligence, ability to remember individual shapes, or spatial attention paid to the stimuli, but other attentional problems could play a mediating role. Deficiencies in visual statistical learning may in some cases prevent appropriate experience-driven shaping of neuronal responses in the ventral visual stream, hampering visual word and object recognition.

Highlights

  • Developmental dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities, with a prevalence rate of up to 17.5%1

  • Dyslexic readers reported a greater history of reading problems than typical readers, as indicated by their significantly higher scores on the ARHQ-Ice screening test (independent samples t-test, t(63) = 13.851, p < 0.001, d = 3.228; Table 1)

  • Our study was partly inspired by previous work on the effects of visual experience on the visual word and object recognition system of the ventral visual stream, and we interpret the results within this general framework

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Summary

Introduction

Developmental dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities, with a prevalence rate of up to 17.5%1. These stimuli were chosen because previous functional neuroimaging results have shown that the temporal visual statistical learning of such shapes affects object-selective and word-selective regions of the ventral visual stream[60], regions that in turn overlap with hypoactive regions in people with dyslexia[52]. Adding group membership at the second stage significantly improved the model (model change: F(1,70) = 6.243, p = 0.015, R2 = 0.078), indicating that a dyslexia diagnosis explained variance in visual statistical learning not explained by nonverbal intelligence.

Results
Conclusion
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