Attentional control over language lateralization in dyslexic children: Deficit or delay?

A Mini-Review: Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Dyslexia

“…In contrast, however, they are just as consistent in underperforming when the task is made more difficult by forcing a reorientation to the left ear after attending to the right [64]. A plausible interpretation of this paradox is poor readers may develop the right attention networking system precociously, giving them an advantage when the task is relatively easy, but compromising performance when increasing attentional the right hemisphere cognitive control system and, simultaniously, underdevelopment of the left lateralized language network.…”

“…My colleagues and I have provided a more direct test in a programmatic series of forced attention dichotic studies. We found evidence of dysfunctional frontostriatal cognitive control in dyslexia in four replications with different samples, consisting of children and adults and including males and females [64,66,67]. Two of these studies included readinglevel controls, which discounts the possibility that the deficit in cognitive control may be a secondary consequence rather than a cause of their reading disability.…”

Does Dyslexia Develop from Learning the Alphabet in the Wrong Hemisphere? A Cognitive Neuroscience Analysis

“…In turn, Condon (1985), using sound-film microanalysis, found that during talking or listening the left side of dyslexic children's faces lagged the right side by an interindividual interval ranging between 100 and 233 ms. In the same vein, dichotic listening research has found that dyslexics ''perform as if there were little interaction of their two cerebral hemispheres'' (Obrzut & Boliek, 1988, p. 494) and that they ''may suffer from a basic, causal deficit in inhibiting the right hemisphere during linguistic processing'' (Kershner & Graham, 1995). However such hemispheric asynchrony is not limited to linguistic tasks: Hermann et al (1986) found that academically successful dyslexics, ages 16 to 47 with disparate psychoeducational profiles, required 140 ms more time to initiate a saccade to bihemifield compared to unihemifield randomly presented dot targets whereas the difference for controls was 46 ms.…”

Dynamic versus structural processing differences characterize laterality patterns of learning disabled children

“…In order to support a claim for causality, dichotic differences between dyslexies and both normal control groups (age matched and reading Downloaded by [McGill University Library] at 07:29 18 November 2014 matched) would need to be demonstrated. Kershner and Graham (1995) conducted such a study in which half of the children in each group were assigned randomly to the left ear first order or the right ear first order.…”