Atypical reliance on monocular visual pathway for face and word recognition in developmental dyslexia

Noa Peskin, Marlene Behrmann, Shai Gabay, Yafit Gabay

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Studies with individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) have documented impaired perception of words and faces, both of which are domains of visual expertise for human adults. In this study, we examined a possible mechanism that might be associated with the impaired acquisition of visual expertise for words and faces in DD, namely, the atypical engagement of the monocular visual pathway. Participants with DD and typical readers (TR) judged whether a pair of sequentially presented unfamiliar faces or nonwords were the same or different, and the pair of stimuli were displayed in an eye-specific fashion using a stereoscope. Based on evidence of greater reliance on subcortical structures early in development, we predicted differences between the groups in the engagement of lower (monocular) versus higher (binocular) regions of the visual pathways. Whereas the TR group showed a monocular advantage for both stimulus types, the DD participants evinced a monocular advantage for faces and words that was much greater than that measured in the TRs. These findings indicate that the DD individuals have enhanced subcortical engagement and that this might arise from the failure to fine-tune cortical correlates mediating the discrimination of homogeneous exemplars in domains of expertise.

Original languageEnglish
Article number106106
JournalBrain and Cognition
Volume174
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2024
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Elsevier Inc.

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation to MB (BCS 2123069) and by grants from the Israeli Science Foundation to YG (734/22) and SG (574/22). MB also acknowledges support from P30 CORE award EY08098 from the National Eye Institute, NIH, and unrestricted supporting funds from The Research to Prevent Blindness Inc, NY, and the Eye & Ear Foundation of Pittsburgh.

FundersFunder number
National Science FoundationBCS 2123069
National Institutes of Health
National Eye Institute
Eye and Ear Foundation of Pittsburgh
Research to Prevent Blindness
Israel Science Foundation734/22, EY08098, 574/22

    Keywords

    • Cortical-subcortical regions
    • Developmental dyslexia
    • Face and word processing
    • Monocular channels
    • Perceptual recognition

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