Impaired Visual Search in Dyslexia Relates to the Role of the Magnocellular Pathway in Attention

Date

1999

Authors

Pammer, Kristen

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Abstract

WE tested the hypothesis that in a cluttered visual scene, the magnocellular (M) pathway is crucial for focusing attention serially on the objects in the field. Since developmental dyslexia is commonly associated with an M pathway deficit, we compared reading impaired children and age- matched normal readers in a search task that required the detection of a target defined by the conjunction of two features, namely form and colour, that are processed by the parvocellular dominated ventral neocortical stream. The dyslexic group's performance was significantly poorer than the controls when there were a large number of distractor items. The scheme of selective attention proposed from these results provides a neural mechanism that underlies reading and explains the pathophysiology of dyslexia.

Description

Keywords

Keywords: article; clinical article; color; controlled study; dyslexia; human; nerve tract; pattern recognition; priority journal; school child; selective attention; task performance; visual discrimination; visual impairment; Analysis of Variance; Attention; Child; Attentional spotlight; Magnocellular and parvocellular pathways; Reading impairment; Serial search; Striate cortex

Citation

Source

NeuroReport

Type

Journal article

Book Title

Entity type

Access Statement

License Rights

DOI

Restricted until

2037-12-31