PERIPHERAL DEVELOPMENTAL DYSLEXIA - A VISUAL ATTENTIONAL ACCOUNT

We report the case of Olivia, a 10-year-old developmental dyslexic who se reading age is 7 years 7 months. Most of her reading errors are vis ual paralexias and she makes neither sematic errors nor errors of regu larisation. Her reading error pattern is thus analogous to that previo usly described in acquired visual dyslexia. Neuropsychological assessm ent shows that reading accuracy is not affected by variables such as w ord frequency, word length, spelling regularity, or the lexical dimens ion of the printed stimuli. The analysis of visual errors reveals the existence of a frequency bias, direct count word frequency of the prod uction being on average higher than that of the stimulus. However, per formance on lexical decision tasks suggests that Olivia's misreadings reflect an initial word misidentification. Overall, the analysis point s to a dysfunction ascribed at a relatively peripheral level of proces sing. Olivia's paralexias are interpreted as reflecting primarily a vi sual attentional impairment. Such a peripheral dysfunction seems to ha ve no major consequence on the development of the reading system but p revents access to an automatic level of word recognition.