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Adults with dyslexia demonstrate attentional orienting deficits
Author(s) -
Buchholz Judy,
Aimola Davies Anne
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
dyslexia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1099-0909
pISSN - 1076-9242
DOI - 10.1002/dys.356
Subject(s) - psychology , dyslexia , cognitive psychology , task (project management) , reading (process) , attentional control , control (management) , developmental psychology , audiology , cognition , neuroscience , medicine , management , political science , law , economics
Alerting, orienting and executive control of attention are investigated in five adult cases of dyslexia. In comparison with a control group, alerting and executive control were found to be generally intact for each case. Two spatial cueing tasks were employed. For the task requiring target detection, orienting difficulties were evident only in peripheral locations. While orienting attention to parafoveal stimuli was intact for this detection task, it was found to be impaired for the discrimination task. These results are discussed with respect to the methodological differences of the two tasks. It is suggested that the observed orienting deficit may be specific to adjusting the size of attentional focus in individuals with dyslexia, and that this could contribute to the reading difficulties observed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.