Auditory perceptual grouping and attention in dyslexia.
Despite dyslexia affecting a large number of people, the mechanisms underlying the disorder remain undetermined. There are numerous theories about the origins of dyslexia. Many of these relate dyslexia to low-level, sensory temporal processing deficits. Another group of theories attributes dyslexia to language-specific impairments. Here, we show that dyslexics perform worse than controls on an auditory perceptual grouping task. The results show differences in performance between the groups that depend on sound frequency and not solely on parameters related to temporal processing. Performance on this task suggests that dyslexics' deficits may result from impaired attentional control mechanisms. Such deficits are neither modality nor language-specific and may help to reconcile differences between theories of dyslexia.
Petkov
Christopher I
CI
Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
O'connor
Kevin N
KN
Benmoshe
Gil
G
Baynes
Kathleen
K
Sutter
Mitchell L
ML
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D013997:Time Factors