Do Children with Developmental Dyslexia Show a Selective Visual Attention Deficit?

The authors investigated the performance of children with developmental dyslexia on a number of visual tasks requiring selective visual attention. Dyslexic children did not show the overestimation of the left visual field (pseudoneglect) characteristic of normal adult vision. The performance of dyslexic children in texture segmentation and feature search tasks was identical to that of control children matched for age, gender and intelligence. However, when tested on conjunction tasks for orientation and form, dyslexic children showed shorter reaction times and a dramatically increased number of errors. Differences between the two groups decreased with increasing age. These results suggest that children with developmental dyslexia present selective deficits in visual attention.