Dyslexia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Dyslexia, including details on learning, reading, education, teaching, treatment.

Deficits in perceptual noise exclusion in developmental dyslexia.

Sperling AJ, Lu ZL, Manis FR, Seidenberg MS

Georgetown University Medical Center, 4000 Reservoir Road NW, Building D, Room 207E, Washington, DC 20057, USA. ajs76@georgetown.edu

We evaluated signal-noise discrimination in children with and without dyslexia, using magnocellular and parvocellular visual stimuli presented either with or without high noise. Dyslexic children had elevated contrast thresholds when stimuli of either type were presented in high noise, but performed as well as non-dyslexic children when either type was displayed without noise. Our findings suggest that deficits in noise exclusion, not magnocellular processing, contribute to the etiology of dyslexia.

Published 1 September 2005 in Nat Neurosci, 8(7): 862-3.
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