A Perceptual Learning Deficit in Chinese Developmental Dyslexia as Revealed by Visual Texture Discrimination Training

Abstract

Learning to read involves discriminating between different written forms and establishing connections with phonology and semantics. This process may be partially built upon visual perceptual learning, during which the ability to process the attributes of visual stimuli progressively improves with practice. The present study investigated to what extent Chinese children with developmental dyslexia have deficits in perceptual learning by using a texture discrimination task, in which participants were asked to discriminate the orientation of target bars. Experiment l demonstrated that, when all of the participants started with the same initial stimulus-to-mask onset asynchrony (SOA) at 300 ms, the threshold SOA, adjusted according to response accuracy for reaching 80% accuracy, did not show a decrement over 5 days of training for children with dyslexia, whereas this threshold SOA steadily decreased over the training for the control group. Experiment 2 used an adaptive procedure to determine the threshold SOA for each participant during training. Results showed that both the group of dyslexia and the control group attained perceptual learning over the sessions in 5 days, although the threshold SOAs were significantly higher for the group of dyslexia than for the control group; moreover, over individual participants, the threshold SOA negatively correlated with their performance in Chinese character recognition. These findings suggest that deficits in visual perceptual processing and learning might, in part, underpin difficulty in reading Chinese.

Verbal Short‐Term Memory Deficits in Chinese Children with Dyslexia may not be a Problem with the Activation of Phonological Representations

“…(2) The Character Recognition Measure and Assessment Scale for Primary School Children (CRM: Wang & Tao, 1993). CRM is a standardized written vocabulary test, which has been commonly used to examine participants' reading skill in Chinese studies (Yeung, Ho, Chan, & Chung, 2014;Wang et al, 2014;Meng et al, 2011;Yang & Bi, 2011;Yang et al, 2013;Qian & Bi, 2014). In this test, characters are divided into 10 groups based on reading difficulty (174 characters for the fourth graders and 210 characters for the fifth graders), which corresponds with the standard difficulty coefficient.…”

Underlying Skills of Oral and Silent Reading Fluency in Chinese: Perspective of Visual Rapid Processing

“…Previous studies have indicated that the visual perceptual processing (e.g., the low-spatial-frequency sensitivity, geometric-figure processing) had an impact on the recognition and encoding processes during Chinese reading in typically developed children and adults (Luo et al, 2013; Yang et al, 2013; Zhao et al, 2013, 2014). Various studies have shown that Chinese individuals with developmental dyslexia exhibit visual deficits (Chung et al, 2008; Wang et al, 2010; Meng et al, 2011; Qian and Bi, 2014), and visual function training for dyslexics can improve their reading-related skills (Meng et al, 2014; Wang et al, 2014; Qian and Bi, 2015). …”

“…Moreover, visual attention span has been found to relate to visuospatial and global processing when participants had to process multiple units (Xue et al, 2013). Given that global visual processing plays an important role in Chinese reading (Wang et al, 2014), it is necessary to explore the relationship between the visual rapid simultaneous processing and reading fluency in Chinese.…”

Neurocognitive Development and Predictors of L1 and L2 Literacy Skills in Dyslexia: A Longitudinal Study of Children 5–11 Years Old

“…Thus, studies of pre‐school children from different cultures indicate that early at‐risk factors of dyslexia should include tests of VS (see i.e. Wang et al ., 2014). …”