1,721,059 research outputs found
Verso la prevenzione della dislessia evolutiva: uno studio clinico, longitudinale e riabilitativo
Full text linkReading is a unique, cognitive human skill crucial to life in modern societies, but, for about 10% of the children, learning to read is extremely difficult. They are affected by a neurodevelopmental disorder called developmental dyslexia. It is widely believed that impaired phonological processing characterizes individuals with developmental dyslexia. These phonological deficits would interfere with one of the most critical skills for successful reading acquisition, the phonological decoding ability. However, reading by phonological decoding also requires rapid selection of sublexical orthographic units through serial attentional orienting. Letters have to be precisely selected from irrelevant and cluttering letters by rapid orienting of visual attention before the correct letter-to-speech sound integration. In the first part of this dissertation, with a 3 year longitudinal study we show that prereading attentional abilities — assessed by serial search performance and spatial cueing facilitation — capture future reading acquisition skills in grades 1 and 2 after controlling for age, nonverbal IQ, speech-sound processing, and nonalphabetic crossmodal mapping. These evidences show that the etiology of dyslexia is multifactorial, and visuo-spatial attention abilities play a fundamental role in the reading acquisition.
We know from literature that the simple act of playing action video game could change many aspects of visuo-spatial attention abilities, enhancing attentional capacity and resolution. In the second part of the dissertation, we show that testing two samples of adults video game players and non video game players on their diffused and focused spatial attention abilities — the same functions that are deficient in children with dyslexia — resulted enhanced in people that use video game.
Starting from these evidence, and the fact that current treatments are high resource demanding, we tested the hypothesis that action video games could increase attentional and reading abilities. We demonstrate that only 12 hours of playing action video games — not involving any direct phonological or orthographic training — improve the reading abilities of children with dyslexia. We tested reading, phonological, and attentional skills in two matched groups of children with dyslexia before and after playing action or non-action video games for 9 daily sessions of 80 minutes. We found that only the group playing action video games improved their reading abilities, more so than after one year of spontaneous reading development and more or equal to highly-demanding traditional reading treatments. Attentional skills also improved during video game training. Individual differences in visual-spatial and cross-modal, temporal-attention improvements accounted for about 50% of the unique variance in the reading enhancement after controlling for age, IQ, and changes in phonological skills.
In the last part of the dissertation, we present a new instrument, a serious game, developed to be used to increase all the cognitive functions that proved their influences on future reading abilities. We show that comparing the serious game scores obtained after a single session evalutation of a sample of preschooler children with and without familial risk for developmental dyslexia, we found differences in the mini games where attentional and phonological performances where tested. These results suggest that the future realization of a treatment based on this serious game could lead to the strengthening of these functions and the decrease in the severity and the incidence of developmental dyslexia in at risk childre
Manual dexterity predicts phonological decoding speed in typical reading adults
No full textManual dexterity and phonological decoding involve the posterior parietal cortex, which controls location coding for visually guided actions, as well as a large fronto-cerebellar network. We studied the relationship between manual dexterity and reading ability in adult typical readers. Two measurements of manual dexterity were collected to index the procedural learning effect. A linear regression model demonstrated that phonological short-term memory, manual dexterity at time 1 and procedural learning of manual dexterity predicted phonological decoding speed. Similar results were found when left-hand dexterity at time 1 and procedural learning dexterity were entered last. The better one’s phonological decoding skill was, the less fluent their manual dexterity was, suggesting a recycle from object–location to letter–location coding. However, the greater the procedural learning, the faster phonological decoding was, suggesting that larger plasticity of object–location coding was linked to better letter–location coding. An independent role of the interhemispheric connections or of the right posterior parietal cortex is also suggested
The effects of bilateral posterior parietal cortex tRNS on reading performance
No full textAccording to established cognitive neuroscience knowledge based on studies on disabled and typically developing readers, reading is based on a dual-stream model in which a phonological-dorsal stream (left temporo-parietal and inferior frontal areas) processes unfamiliar words and pseudowords, whereas an orthographic-ventral stream (left occipito-temporal and inferior frontal areas) processes known words. However, correlational neuroimaging, causal longitudinal, training, and pharmacological studies have suggested the critical role of visuo-spatial attention in reading development. In a double blind, crossover within-subjects experiment, we manipulated the neuromodulatory effect of a short-term bilateral stimulation of posterior parietal cortex (PPC) by using active and sham tRNS during reading tasks in a large sample of young adults. In contrast to the dual-stream model predicting either no effect or a selective effect on the stimulated phonological-dorsal stream (as well as to a general multisensory effect on both reading streams), we found that only word-reading performance improved after active bilateral PPC tRNS. These findings demonstrate a direct neural connectivity between the PPC, controlling visuo-spatial attention, and the ventral stream for visual word recognition. These results support a neurobiological model of reading where performance of the orthographic-ventral stream is boosted by an efficient deployment of visuo-spatial attention from bilateral PPC stimulation
Spatial attention and learning to read: Evidence from a 3-years longitudinal study
No full textDevelopmental dyslexia is a neurobiological disorder that affects about 10% of the children. Although
impaired auditory and speech sound processing is widely assumed to characterize dyslexic individuals,
emerging evidence suggests that dyslexia could arise from a more basic cross-modal letter-to-speech
sound integration deficit. Nevertheless, letters must be precisely selected from irrelevant and cluttering
letters by rapid shifting of visual attention before the correct letter-to-speech sound integration is applied.
Thus, is prereading visual parietal-attention functioning able to explain future reading emergence
and development? The present 3-years longitudinal study shows that prereading attentional shifting
ability—assessed by serial search performance and spatial cueing facilitation—captures not only future
basis of reading skills (ie, rapid letter naming and pseudoword length effect) but also words and text
reading abilities in grades 1 and 2 after controlling for speech-sound processing as well as nonalphabetic
crossmodal mapping. Our results provide evidence that visual spatial attention efficiency in preschoolers
specifically predicts future reading acquisition, suggesting new approaches for early identification and a
more efficient prevention of developmental dyslexia
The short-term effects of play on reading and sensorimotor skills in young adults.
No full textMammals, and in particular humans, spend a large part of their childhood
playing. Video-gaming has become one of the most diffused forms of play. The
transient cognitive enhancement driven by positive emotions linked to play
induces a cascade effect on reading and sensorimotor skills of children with
developmental dyslexia and coordination disorder. Since the play activity is
maintained in humans even after childhood, we hypothesized that the
beneficial effect of fun play could be observed also in adults. We compared the
short-term effects induced by a puzzle board game and by Mario Kart videogame in sensorimotor and reading skills in 62 young adults of which sixteen
were identified as poor readers because their reading abilities were lower -2
standard deviation.Mario kart, which was the funnier and more activating
game, enhanced sensorimotor abilities in the entire sample of participants,
whereas a reading speed improvement was observed mainly in the poor
readers. Thus, also in young adults with poor reading skills, fun play appears to
increase reading speed, probably enhancing their sensorimotor neural network
Action Video Games Training in Children with Developmental Dyslexia: A Meta-Analysis
No full textLongitudinal studies and meta-analyses have shown a causal link between attentional dysfunctions and developmental dyslexia (DD). We carried out a meta-analysis to test the effectiveness of action video games (AVGs) training on visual attention in children with DD. PubMed, Cochrane, Science Report, EBSCO Database, Scopus, ProQuest Dissertation and Theses, and IEEE Explore were consulted. Only quantitative studies with measures of pre- and post-treatment reading skills, written in English, and with an active control group were considered. The risk of bias was evaluated according to RoB2 and ROBINS-I assessment tools. Out of 2073 records, nine experiments using AVGs in 238 children (aged 5-15) with DD were selected. The Hedge's g results indicate that AVGs training affects visual attention as well as reading-related functions. Studies with a larger sample including follow-up assessments and neurobiological studies are needed to verify AVGs long-lasting effects on DD
Action video games enhance attentional control and phonological decoding in children with developmental dyslexia
Full text linkReading acquisition is extremely difficult for about 5% of children because they are affected by a heritable neurobiological disorder called developmental dyslexia (DD). Intervention studies can be used to investigate the causal role of neurocognitive deficits in DD. Recently, it has been proposed that action video games (AVGs)—enhancing attentional control—could improve perception and working memory as well as reading skills. In a partial crossover intervention study, we investigated the effect of AVG and non-AVG training on attentional control using a conjunction visual search task in children with DD. We also measured the non-alphanumeric rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological decoding and word reading before and after AVG and non-AVG training. After both video game training sessions no effect was found in non-alphanumeric RAN and in word reading performance. However, after only 12 h of AVG training the attentional control was improved (i.e., the set-size slopes were flatter in visual search) and phonological decoding speed was accelerated. Crucially, attentional control and phonological decoding speed were increased only in DD children whose video game score was highly efficient after the AVG training. We demonstrated that only an efficient AVG training induces a plasticity of the fronto-parietal attentional control linked to a selective phonological decoding improvement in children with DD
Visuospatial attention in pre-schoolers predicts reading acquisition
No full textDevelopmental dyslexia (DD) is a neurobiological disorder characterized by difficulty in reading acquisition despite adequate intelligence, conventional education and motivation. Impaired phonological processing is widely assumed to characterize dyslexic individuals. However, emerging evidence indicates that phonological problems and reading impairment both arise from poor visuo-orthographic coding. Reading acquisition, indeed, requires rapid selection of sublexical orthographic units through serial attentional orienting, and recent studies have shown that visuospatial attention is impaired not only in children with dyslexia but also in pre-readers at risk of dyslexia. The causal role of both phonological and visuospatial attention processing on reading acquisition was investigated in eighty-two pre-reader children. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that, although chronological age and nonverbal IQ as well as phonological processing were controlled for, pre-reading measures of visual parietal-attention functioning, as assessed by rapid peripheral object perception, spatial cueing facilitation and serial search skill, predict early literacy skills in Grade 1 and 2. Our findings provide evidence that—independently from the core phonological deficit—a visuo-attentional dysfunction may play a crucial role in reading failure, suggesting a new approach for a more efficient prevention of developmental dyslexia
Developmental dyslexia: Perceptual noise exclusion deficit or spatial attention dysfunction?
No full textDevelopmental dyslexia (DD) is characterized by a multi-sensory perceptual noise exclusion deficit. Indeed, dyslexics typically show a specific deficit in the ability to detect relevant stimuli (the signal) when spatiotemporal irrelevant stimuli (the noise) are closely presented. However, spatial attention seems to be the crucial process involved in perceptual noise exclusion and it has shown consistently impaired in dyslexics. The aim of the present study was to verify whether a defective automatic shifting of visual attention could explain the perceptual noise exclusion deficit in children with DD. Accuracy in identifying a target was measured in 31 dyslexics and 23 normally reading children by an experimental paradigm including two attentional (focused vs unfocused) and two noise conditions (signal vs signal plus lateral noise). Our results confirm, in children with DD, a specific target identification deficit when stimuli were displayed with lateral noise. More importantly, dyslexics were specifically impaired in the signal plus lateral noise only in focused attention, suggesting that the attentional shifting process could affect the general perceptual noise exclusion mechanism in DD
Action video-games improves reading and global perception in children with dyslexia: An electroencephalographic study
Full text linkWe used electroencephalography (32 channels-EEG) in a sample of children with DD to investigate whether AVG training can effectively translate into better MD functionality at the neurophysiological level
- …
