Behavioral and ERP evidence for amodal sluggish attentional shifting in developmental dyslexia

Cognitive basis of individual differences in speech perception, production and representations: The role of domain general attentional switching

“…The current findings of contribution of attention to speech processing are compatible with our previous study where visual attention switching could predict tone discrimination efficiency (Ou et al, 2015), as well as research that also found a role of attention in modulating perceptual sensitivity to speech sounds (e.g., Astheimer & Sanders, 2009;Díaz et al, 2008;Jesse & Janse, 2012). The significance of attention switching/ shifting in influencing the distinctiveness of speech representations has been hypothesized in the SAS hypothesis (Hari & Renvall, 2001;Lallier et al, 2010;Ruffino et al, 2010). While the SAS hypothesis originally set out to account for the poor phonological decoding skills among children with developmental dyslexia, the present findings point to the possibility that this hypothesis could be extended to typically developed adults.…”

“…Our observations regarding cognitive performances of the participants with different patterns of perception and production of T2 and T5 further demonstrate that individual differences in speech processing may be determined by some higher level cognitive function, such as attention switching/shifting (Hari & Renvall, 2001;Lallier et al, 2010). Specifically, individuals' abilities to switch their attentional focus in the visual modality (measured with VE1 and VE2) can account for differences in behavioral discrimination sensitivity (d′).…”

“…Individuals' working memory capacity was also assessed in auditory and visual modalities respectively by the auditory digit span backward test and the subscales of visual processing speed-symbol search, coding and cancellation in the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV (WAIS-IV; Wechsler, 2010). In addition, an auditory stream segregation perceptual sensitivity d′ to T2 and T5 for the three participant groups task, and the Flanker task were used to measure individuals' attentional shifting and inhibitory control respectively, given that individual differences in these cognitive skills have been found to be related to the quality of phonological representation (e.g., Lallier et al, 2010;Lev-Ari & Peperkamp, 2014). Further details regarding the stimuli and procedures for the cognitive measures can be found in Ou et al (2015).…”

“…Theories concerning the mechanism of attention in pre-lexical processing during speech perception have been developed from research on developmental disorders, i.e., specific language impairment, and developmental dyslexia. For instance, the BSluggish Attentional Shifting^(SAS) hypothesis proposes that the flexibility of the attentional system influences the quality of phonological representations (Hari & Renvall, 2001;Lallier et al, 2010;Ruffino et al, 2010). Specifically, when individuals with sluggish attentional shifting process sequences of rapidly presented stimuli, their automatic attentional system cannot disengage fast enough from one item to encode the next, leading to confusion of consecutive sounds, thereby hindering adequate processing of salient acoustic cues, and resulting in unstable and variant phonemic representations in the mental lexicon.…”

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia: a history of overlap

“…Common underlying features may be contributing to the high co-morbidity between these disorders. There are propositions that dyslexia might be related to underlying deficits in attention shifting 5 . The study published in the current issue of Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria by Miranda et al 6 contributes to this field.…”