Stéphanie Bellocchi

I can read it in your eyes: what eye movements tell us about visuo-attentional processes in developmental dyslexia

Most studies today agree about the link between visual-attention and oculomotor control during reading: attention seems to affect saccadic programming, that is, the position where the eyes land in a word. Moreover, recent studies show that visuo-attentional processes are strictly linked to normal and impaired reading. In particular, a large body of research has found evidence of defective visuo-attentional processes in dyslexics. What do eye movements tell us about visuo-attentional deficits in developmental dyslexia? The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between oculomotor control and dyslexia, taking into account its heterogeneous manifestation and comorbidity. Clinical perspectives in the use of the eye-movements approach to better explore and understand reading impairments are discussed.

Lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in bilingual children reading Italian as a second language

In Italian, developing readers exhibit lexicality and frequency effects, and are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. But how do bilingual children with different ages of first L2 (Italian) exposure and L2 vocabulary sizes read L2 words and pseudowords? Two reading aloud experiments investigated lexicality, frequency and stress assignment effects in fourth- and fifth-grade bilinguals and monolinguals. Naming latencies and pronunciation accuracy were analyzed. In Experiment 1, effects of lexicality and frequency and between-group differences emerged. In Experiment 2, the word frequency effect was confirmed. Late bilinguals, characterized by a smaller L2 vocabulary size, were less accurate than early bilinguals and monolinguals in assigning non-dominant stress. As with monolinguals, lexical information seems to be employed when reading Italian as a second language. Furthermore, bilingual readers are sensitive to the distributional properties of the language. Stress assignment is affected by the L2 lexicon size of second-language learners.

Exploring the Link between Visual Perception, Visual–Motor Integration, and Reading in Normal Developing and Impaired Children using DTVP‐2

Reading is known to be primarily a linguistic task. However, to successfully decode written words, children also need to develop good visual-perception skills. Furthermore, motor skills are implicated in letter recognition and reading acquisition. Three studies have been designed to determine the link between reading, visual perception, and visual-motor integration using the Developmental Test of Visual Perception version 2 (DTVP-2). Study 1 tests how visual perception and visual-motor integration in kindergarten predict reading outcomes in Grade 1, in typical developing children. Study 2 is aimed at finding out if these skills can be seen as clinical markers in dyslexic children (DD). Study 3 determines if visual-motor integration and motor-reduced visual perception can distinguish DD children according to whether they exhibit or not developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Results showed that phonological awareness and visual-motor integration predicted reading outcomes one year later. DTVP-2 demonstrated similarities and differences in visual-motor integration and motor-reduced visual perception between children with DD, DCD, and both of these deficits. DTVP-2 is a suitable tool to investigate links between visual perception, visual-motor integration and reading, and to differentiate cognitive profiles of children with developmental disabilities (i.e. DD, DCD, and comorbid children). Copyright

Normal Reading Abilities and Specific Reading Disabilities (Developmental Dyslexia) : a Cross-Linguistic Study

Abstract : Although the majority of research on developmental dyslexia has been carried out in English, a number of studies have been performed in different languages. Some of the findings suggest that learning to read in deep orthographies, such as English, is harder than in shallow orthographies such as Italian (Seymour, Aro, Erskine 2003). However, very few direct comparative studies have been carried out in order to highlight differences or similarities between different orthographies (e.g. Ziegler, Perry, Ma-Wyatt, Ladner, Schulte-Korne 2003). The present study aims at directly comparing reading-aloud abilities between French and Italian dyslexics by using a similar methodology for defining groups and measure performances. Results show a specific reading disorder in dyslexics and a lexicality effect which is not influenced by the type of orthography. By using a direct cross-linguistic comparison, this study provides evidence that lexicality effect is a general, non language-specific feature of the reading process, at least among French and Italian subjects.

Effects of inter-character spacing on saccade programming in beginning readers and dyslexics

ABSTRACT The present study investigated the impact of inter-character spacing on saccade programming in beginning readers and dyslexic children. In two experiments, eye movements were recorded while dyslexic children, reading-age, and chronological-age controls, performed an oculomotor lateralized bisection task on words and strings of hashes presented either with default inter-character spacing or with extra spacing between the characters. The results of Experiment 1 showed that (1) only proficient readers had already developed highly automatized procedures for programming both left- and rightward saccades, depending on the discreteness of the stimuli and (2) children of all groups were disrupted (i.e., had trouble to land close to the beginning of the stimuli) by extra spacing between the characters of the stimuli, and particularly for stimuli presented in the left visual field. Experiment 2 was designed to disentangle the role of inter-character spacing and spatial width. Stimuli were made the same physical length in the default and extra-spacing conditions by having more characters in the default spacing condition. Our results showed that inter-letter spacing still influenced saccade programming when controlling for spatial width, thus confirming the detrimental effect of extra spacing for saccade programming. We conclude that the beneficial effect of increased inter-letter spacing on reading can be better explained in terms of decreased visual crowding than improved saccade targeting.