Visuospatial attention deficits in developmental dyslexia: Evidence from visual and mental number line bisection tasks

Abstract

Previous research has shown that individuals withDD(developmental dyslexia) demonstrated a left mini neglect on visual line (VL) bisection tasks, which has been commonly referred to as right parietal dysfunction. However, insufficient reading experience characterizes dyslexia and may call into question the validity of this interpretation, since theVLbisection task has been found to be influenced by reading habits. The current study investigated whether altered performance of individuals withDDon bisection tasks may be attributed to impaired attentional mechanisms or to insufficient reading exposure.DDand control groups performed visual and mental number line bisection tasks, which have been shown to be modulated differently by reading habits. In both tasks, the magnitude of left bisection errors was significantly larger in the DD group compared with controls. This finding suggests attentional mechanisms act differently in dyslexia and supports evidence linking dyslexia to decreased function of the left hemisphere. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.