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Reduced perceptual processing speed and atypical attentional weight at the cores of visual simultaneous processing deficits in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia: a parameter-based assessment of visual attention

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Abstract

Individuals with developmental dyslexia usually exhibit a problem in simultaneous processing of multiple visual elements. However, the relationship between impaired visual simultaneous processing (VSP) and reading difficulty is still debated. These inconsistencies may be associated with a wide range of participants’ age, variation in orthographic depth of background languages, and complex subcomponents underlying VSP. The present study thus examined the VSP capacity of children with dyslexia in the language context of Chinese (i.e., a logographic writing system with deep orthography) through the developmental trajectories method in which participants’ age was considered as a continuous variable. This visual multiple-element processing skill was fractionated into four parameters (processing speed, visual short-term memory storage, attentional weight, and irrelevant inhibition) within the framework of the theory of visual attention (TVA). Forty-seven children with dyslexia and fifty-three age-matched normal readers from primary schools were recruited to take a combined TVA test using symbols as non-verbal stimuli. Results showed that the developmental trajectories of children with dyslexia exhibited a delayed pattern in perceptual processing speed and an atypical pattern in attentional weight compared to the controls. Further mediation analyses showed the triangular relationship of “TVA subcomponent-linguistic awareness-reading,” revealing the possible roles of these subcomponents regarding VSP in Chinese reading. The current findings suggested that the VSP deficit of Chinese children with dyslexia may stem from impairments in perceptual processing speed and attentional weight, revealing the possible modulation of language specificity (i.e., Chinese) on cognitive deficits of dyslexia, which may have implications for the diagnosis and remediation of dyslexia.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all the children, their family and teachers who participated in this study. At the same time, we feel very grateful to the graduate students in our school who helped us collect data.

Code Availability

Not applicable.

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers: 31871117].

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Author notes

  1. Jing Zhao and Jie Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, School of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China

    Jing Zhao, Jie Li & Yue Yang

Authors
  1. Jing Zhao
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  2. Jie Li
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  3. Yue Yang
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Contributions

Jing Zhao: Conceptualization; Funding acquisition; Project administration; Resources; Visualization; Supervision; Validation; Writing - Original draft preparation; Writing - Reviewing and Editing. Jie Li: Investigation; Methodology; Data curation; Formal analysis; Software; Validation; Writing - Reviewing and Editing. Yue Yang: Methodology; Data curation; Software.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jing Zhao.

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Ethics Approval (Include Appropriate Approvals or Waivers)

The research was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of School of Psychology, Capital Normal University. This study was carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans.

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Informed consents were obtained from all participants’ parents and teachers.

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The participants’ parents and teachers signed informed consent regarding publishing their data.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Jing Zhao and Jie Li are Co-first author.

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Zhao, J., Li, J. & Yang, Y. Reduced perceptual processing speed and atypical attentional weight at the cores of visual simultaneous processing deficits in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia: a parameter-based assessment of visual attention. Curr Psychol 42, 3291–3304 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01691-x

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