ABSTRACT
Two experiments aimed to determine why adults with dyslexia have higher global motion thresholds than typically reading controls. In Experiment 1, the dot density and number of animation frames presented in the dot stimulus were manipulated because of findings that use of a high dot density can normalize coherence thresholds in individuals with dyslexia. Dot densities were 14.15 and 3.54 dots/deg(2). These were presented for five (84 ms) or eight (134 ms) frames. The dyslexia group had higher coherence thresholds in all conditions than controls. However, in the high dot density, long duration condition, both reader groups had the lowest thresholds indicating normal temporal recruitment. These results indicated that the dyslexia group could sample the additional signals dots over space and then integrate these with the same efficiency as controls. In Experiment 2, we determined whether briefly presenting a fully coherent prime moving in either the same or opposite direction of motion to a partially coherent test stimulus would systematically increase and decrease global motion thresholds in the reader groups. When the direction of motion in the prime and test was the same, global motion thresholds increased for both reader groups. The increase in coherence thresholds was significantly greater for the dyslexia group. When the motion of the prime and test were presented in opposite directions, coherence thresholds were reduced in both groups. No group threshold differences were found. We concluded that the global motion processing deficit found in adults with dyslexia can be explained by undersampling of the target motion signals. This might occur because of difficulties directing attention to the relevant motion signals in the random dot pattern, and not a specific difficulty integrating global motion signals. These effects are most likely to occur in the group with dyslexia when more complex computational processes are required to process global motion.
ABSTRACT
The aim of the experiments was to investigate how manipulating the contrast of the signal and noise dots in a random dot kinematogram (RDK), influenced on motion coherence thresholds in adults with dyslexia. In the first of two experiments, coherent motion thresholds were measured when the contrasts of the signal and noise dots in an RDK were manipulated. A significantly greater processing benefit was found for the group with dyslexia than a control group when the signal dots were of higher contrast than the noise dots. However, a significant processing disadvantage was found for the group with dyslexia relative to the control group when the signal dots were of lower contrast than the noise dots. These findings were interpreted as supporting evidence for the noise exclusion hypothesis of dyslexia. In Experiment 2, the effect on coherent motion thresholds of presenting a cue that alerted observers to which stimuli, high or low contrast contained the signals dots was investigated. When the cue directed attention to low contrast signal dots presented in high contrast noise, coherent motion thresholds were only enhanced for the group with dyslexia. This manipulation produced equivalent coherent motion thresholds in the reader groups. In other conditions, the group with dyslexia had significantly higher coherent motion thresholds than the control group. It was concluded that adults with dyslexia who show evidence of a coherent motion deficit (37% of the dyslexia group in each experiment), have a specific difficulty in noise exclusion. This appears to occur as consequence of a sensory processing deficit in the magnocellular or dorsal stream.
