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Asynchrony of visual-orthographic and auditory-phonological word recognition processes: An underlying factor in dyslexia

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Abstract

This study investigated whether asynchrony ofspeed of processing (SOP) betweenvisual-orthographic and auditory-phonologicalmodalities can account for word recognitiondeficits among dyslexic readers. SOP amongelementary school dyslexic readers was comparedto that of chronologically age-matched normalreaders. SOP was assessed using nonlinguisticand linguistic auditory and visual low-leveltasks and higher-level orthographic andphonological tasks. Behavioral andelectrophysiological (ERP) measures of SOP wereobtained. Data indicated that dyslexic readerswere significantly slower than control readersin most of the experimental tasks. Moreover,dyslexics revealed a systematic SOP gap betweenthe auditory-phonological and thevisual-orthographic modalities. This gap wasfound in both P200 and P300 latencies, andexplained most of the variance in wordrecognition. A theory is proposed suggestingthat asynchrony between the processing rates ofthe visual and the auditory modalities may bean underlying cause of dyslexia.

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  1. Laboratory of Neurocognitive Research, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Mont Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel

    Zvia Breznitz

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Breznitz, Z. Asynchrony of visual-orthographic and auditory-phonological word recognition processes: An underlying factor in dyslexia. Reading and Writing 15, 15–42 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013864203452

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