DEVELOPMENTAL DYSLEXIA AND VISUOSPATIAL A TTENTION

This paper gives an overview of the literature on the visuo-perceptual and visuo-attentional deficits of dyslexic children. The hypothesis t hat visuo-attentional problems cooccur with dyslexia was assessed thro ugh a task of search for a target among distractors. Serial-attentiona l visual processing was required in one task condition (search for O a mong Q s) whereas the other condition involved parallel/automatic proc essing (search for Q among O s). Ten, dyslexic subjects constituted th e experimental group. Their performance was compared to that of 20 non -dyslexic children, 10 matched for chronological age and 10 for readin g age. The performance of dyslexic subjects was similar to that of chi ldren matched for chronological age in the parallel/automatic conditio n. In contrast, their performance differed by an increased search slop e from that of the two control groups in the serial/attentional condit ion. These results suggest the existence of visuo-attentional deficits in dyslexic children.