Vision and Attention. II: Is Visual Attention a Mechanism Through Which a Deficient Magnocellular Pathway Might Cause Reading Disability?

Recent research in reading disability has discovered that at least some reading-disabled subjects have deficits in their magnocellular (M) visual pathways. However, the mechanism by which M pathway deficits affect reading has not been addressed. Abnormal attention has long been known to be associated with reading-disabled individuals, and new research in visual attention has determined that transient visual attention is dominated by M-stream inputs. The purpose of this study was to determine whether visual attention might be the mechanism through which a faulty M pathway could produce visual deficits in reading-disabled subjects. Spatiotemporal attentional response functions were measured using the Line Motion Illusion and compared in normal and disabled readers. Specific abnormalities in the visual attention mechanisms of disabled readers were found which might suggest mechanisms by which reading could be affected by a deficient M stream.