Visual Perceptual Learning in Chinese Developmental Dyslexia

Deficits in the visual attention span (VAS) are thought to hamper reading performance in dyslexic individuals. However, the causal relationship between VAS deficits and reading disability remains unclear. The present study attempts to address this issue by using a VAS-based intervention to explore the possible influence of VAS on reading processes in Chinese children with dyslexia. Given the influence of the heterogeneity of dyslexia on intervention effects, VAS-impaired dyslexic and VAS-intact dyslexic individuals were separately trained. Therefore, there were five groups of participants in this study, including 10 trained dyslexic individuals with VAS deficits and 10 untrained dyslexic individuals with VAS dysfunction as the baseline reference, 10 trained and 10 untrained dyslexic individuals with an intact VAS, and fourteen age-matched normal readers for reference of normal level. All participants completed reading measures and a visual 1-back task, reflecting VAS capacity with non-verbal stimuli and non-verbal responses, before and after VAS-based training. VAS-based training tasks included a length estimation task regarding the bottom-up attention, visual search and digit cancelling tasks targeting top-down attentional modulation, and visual tracking tasks to train eye-movement control. The results showed that visual training only helped improve VAS skills in VAS-impaired dyslexic individuals receiving training. Meanwhile, their silent sentence reading accuracy improved after training, and there was a significant relationship between training improvements in VAS function and reading performance. The current findings suggest that VAS-based training has a far-transfer effect on linguistic level (i.e., fluent reading). These findings suggest the possibility that VAS-related training may help children with dyslexia improve their reading skills.

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“…The visual search task is similar to the one in the study by Lin et al . 75 . The stimuli were circles and ovals (Fig.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving sentence reading performance in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia by training based on visual attention span

Zhao

Liu

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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“…First, because we know that visual perceptual learning involves various visual features, the generalization of the present findings needs to be verified with more participants and varieties of visual perceptual learning tasks (Lin, Wang, & Meng, 2013). However, the following additional questions are raised from this preliminary observation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…However, the following additional questions are raised from this preliminary observation. First, because we know that visual perceptual learning involves various visual features, the generalization of the present findings needs to be verified with more participants and varieties of visual perceptual learning tasks (Lin, Wang, & Meng, 2013). Second, the nature, correlation or causality, of the relationship between visual perceptual learning and Chinese reading has also yet to be clarified with longitudinal design and training study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

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

et al. 2014

Self Cite

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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.

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“…In the screening stage, we first used the Raven's standard progressive matrices and the Character Recognition Measure and Assessment Scale for Primary School Children. According to the study in mainland China, children diagnosed with dyslexia performed at least one standard deviation (SD) below the mean for their grade level on literacy tests [33]. Therefore, in the present study, children who have a normal IQ (an intelligence score greater than or equal to 85) and character recognition scores of at least one SD lower than normal were selected.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reliability and Validity of an Assessment Tool for Developmental Dyslexia in Chinese Children

Huang

et al. 2020

IJERPH

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Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a common neurobehavioral disorder in children. It refers to the phenomenon in which children with normal intelligence lag significantly behind their peers in reading ability. In China, there is no unified standard for the assessment of dyslexia due to the use of simplified and traditional Chinese characters in different regions. This study was aimed at analyzing the reliability and validity of the self-developed Chinese dyslexia assessment tool named Chinese Reading Ability Test (CRAT), which was suitable for students of grade 3 to 5 in primary school. We randomly selected three primary schools in Shantou city of China, including two in the central district and one in the surrounding district. A total of 1492 students of grades 3 through 5 were recruited. We assessed the reliability of CRAT by test–retest reliability and internal consistency. The validity assessment was realized by discriminant validity, content validity and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). For reliability, the test–retest correlation coefficient of the total score of the CRAT was 0.671. The difference between the test–retest was not statistically significant. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the CRAT was 0.75. For validity, the correlation coefficient between the score of each subscale and the total score of the scale ranged from 0.29 to 0.73. The indexes of the three structural equation models all meet the standard (p > 0.05, χ2/df < 2.00, RMSEA < 0.05, GFI > 0.90, AGFI > 0.90, NFI > 0.90, CFI > 0.90 and IFI > 0.90). The fitting effects of the models were good. The CRAT has sufficient reliability and validity which could be used for the assessment and auxiliary diagnosis of Chinese Dyslexia in primary school students of grade 3 to 5.

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Visual Perceptual Learning in Chinese Developmental Dyslexia

Cited by 8 publications

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Improving sentence reading performance in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia by training based on visual attention span

Improving sentence reading performance in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia by training based on visual attention span

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

The Reliability and Validity of an Assessment Tool for Developmental Dyslexia in Chinese Children

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