CAN A TEMPORAL PROCESSING DEFICIT ACCOUNT FOR DYSLEXIA

In this comment, we argue that although Farmer and Klein (1995) have p rovided a valuable review relating deficits in nonreading tasks and dy slexia, their basic claim that a ''temporal processing deficit'' is on e possible cause of dyslexia is somewhat vague. We argue that ''tempor al processing deficit'' is never clearly defined. Furthermore, we ques tion some of their assumptions concerning an auditory temporal process ing deficit related to dyslexia, and we present arguments and data tha t seem inconsistent with their claims regarding how a visual temporal processing deficit would manifest itself in dyslexic readers. While we agree that some dyslexics have visual problems, we conclude that prob lems with reading caused by the visual mechanisms that Farmer and Klei n postulate are quite rare.