Abstract
Developmental dyslexia is defined by reading impairments that are disproportionate to intelligence, motivation, and the educational opportunities considered necessary for reading. Its cause has traditionally been considered to be a phonological deficit, where people have difficulties with differentiating the sounds of spoken language. However, reading is a multidimensional skill and relies on various cognitive abilities. These may include high-level vision—the processes that support visual recognition despite innumerable image variations, such as in viewpoint, position, or size. According to our high-level visual dysfunction hypothesis, reading problems of some people with dyslexia can be a salient manifestation of a more general deficit of high-level vision. This paper provides a perspective on how such non-phonological impairments could, in some cases, cause dyslexia. To argue in favor of this hypothesis, we will discuss work on functional neuroimaging, structural imaging, electrophysiology, and behavior that provides evidence for a link between high-level visual impairment and dyslexia.
Highlights
The influence of phonological awareness in dyslexia seems to be modulated by the orthography of languages, where it is less associated with reading outcomes in languages with shallow, or more transparent, orthographies [18]
We argue for the perspective that some people with developmental dyslexia have a disorder of high-level vision
Typical readers showed an expected left lateralization for the N170 triggered by words and right lateralization for the N170 for faces, but people with developmental dyslexia showed no signs of laterality for either category [155]
Summary
Children and adults with developmental dyslexia have reading impairments that are disproportionate to their intelligence, motivation, and educational opportunities considered necessary for reading. We will argue that the most parsimonious explanation for this is provided by the highlevel visual dysfunction hypothesis: Reading problems in dyslexia can, for some readers with dyslexia, be a salient manifestation of a more general deficit of high-level vision. As these visual processes are assumed to be supported by higher levels of the ventral visual stream [20] (see below), we refer to this as the ventral view of dyslexia. To argue in favor of this hypothesis, we will discuss work on functional neuroimaging, structural imaging, electrophysiology, and behavior that provides evidence of a link between highlevel visual impairment and dyslexia
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