Andrea Facoetti|Anna Noemi Trussardi|Milena Ruffino|Maria Luisa Lorusso|Carmen Cattaneo|R. Galli|Massimo Molteni|Marco Zorzi
Multisensory Spatial Attention Deficits Are Predictive of Phonological Decoding Skills in Developmental Dyslexia
University of Padua|IRCCS Eugenio Medea|University of Bergamo|University of Padua|IRCCS Eugenio Medea|IRCCS Eugenio Medea|IRCCS Eugenio Medea|IRCCS Eugenio Medea|IRCCS Eugenio Medea|University of Padua
abstract although dominant approach posits developmental dyslexia arises deficits systems exclusively linguistic nature ie phonological deficit theory dyslexics show variety lower level deficits sensory attentional processing although link reading disorder remains contentious recent empirical computational studies suggest spatial attention plays important role phonological decoding present behavioral study investigated exogenous spatial attention dyslexic children matched controls measuring rts visual auditory stimuli cueddetection tasks dyslexics poor nonword decoding accuracy showed slower time course visual auditory multisensory spatial attention compared chronological age reading level controls well compared dyslexics slow accurate nonword decoding individual differences time course multisensory spatial attention accounted 31 unique variance nonword reading performance entire dyslexic sample controlling age iq phonological skills present study suggests multisensory sluggish attention shiftingrelated temporoparietal dysfunctionselectively impairs sublexical mechanisms critical reading development findings may offer new approach early identification remediation developmental dyslexia