title: Wide and diffuse perceptual modes characterize dyslexics in vision and audition.
abstract: We examined the performance of dyslexic and typically reading children on two analogous recognition tasks: one visual and the other auditory. Both tasks required recognition of centrally and peripherally presented stimuli. Dyslexics recognized letters visually farther in the periphery and more diffuse near the center than typical readers did. Both groups performed comparably in recognizing centrally spoken stimuli presented without peripheral interference, but in the presence of a surrounding speech mask (the 'cocktail-party effect') dyslexics recognized the central stimuli significantly less well than typical readers. However, dyslexics had a higher ratio of the number of words recognized from the surrounding speech mask, relative to the ones from the center, than typical readers did. We suggest that the evidence of wide visual and auditory perceptual modes in dyslexics indicates wider multi-dimensional neural tuning of sensory processing interacting with wider spatial attention.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Biological and Computational Learning and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research-Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Room 46-5162, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. gadi@ai.mit.edu
authors.forename: Gadi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Geiger
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cattaneo
authors.forename: Raffaella
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Galli
authors.forename: Uberto
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Pozzoli
authors.forename: Maria Luisa
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Lorusso
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Facoetti
authors.forename: Massimo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Molteni
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011601:Psychophysics; D011932:Reading; D013067:Speech Perception