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Psychological Science 2006

Motion-Perception Deficits and Reading Impairment

Anne J. Sperling1,2; Zhong-Lin Lu3,4; Franklin R. Manis3,4; Mark S. Seidenberg5

1 Georgetown University · 2 Georgetown University Medical Center · 3 University of Southern California · 4 California Southern University · 5 University of Wisconsin–Madison

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that deficits on sensory-processing tasks frequently associated with poor reading and dyslexia are the result of impairments in external-noise exclusion, rather than motion perception or magnocellular processing. We compared the motion-direction discrimination thresholds of adults and children with good or poor reading performance, using coherent-motion displays embedded in external noise. Both adults and children who were poor readers had higher thresholds than their respective peers in the presence of high external noise, but not in the presence of low external noise or when the signal was clearly demarcated. Adults' performance in high external noise correlated with their general reading ability, whereas children's performance correlated with their language and verbal abilities. The results support the hypothesis that noise-exclusion deficits impair reading and language development and suggest that the impact of such deficits on the development of reading skills changes with age.

DOI
10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01825.x
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