The Impact Of Reading Experience On Visual Perceptual Processing

Reading is one of the most common cognitive skills for human beings,which requires precise visual processing to identify the word.Many studies have shown that reading experience is related to visual processing performance.In particular,the researches about dyslexia indicated dyslexia patients have obvious visual processing defects compared with normal subjects.For example,their performance is lower than the normal subjects on visual attention span,spatial attention orientation and motion perception.However,previous studies have failed to address the causal relationship between visual perception defects and reduced reading experience.In order to further understand this question,we made illiterate and literate adult subjects explore the influence of reading experience on visual attention span,visuospatial attention and motion perception through a series of studies.In study 1,we used the classic two-alternative forced-choice task(Ziegler et al.,2010)to explore the processing of digital and symbolic stimulation for illiterate and literate adults,in order to reveal the impact of reading experience on the visual attention span.In study 2,we explored the difference between illiterate and literate adults for spatial attention orientation by using the classic spatial cueing paradigm(Facoetti et al.,2010).In study 3,we explore the effect of speed and duration on the motion perception for illiterate and literate adults by using the coherent dots motion task(Gori et al.,2015).The main findings are as follows:(1)The correct rates of illiterate adults for processing digital stimulation in each spatial position is significantly lower than that of literate adults,and the performance of illiterate adults on symbolic stimulation is also significantly lower than literate adults when the symbolic stimulation was on the left side of the visual field.These results indicated that the lack of reading experience affects the visual attention span,especially affects the attention processing for stimulation on the left visual field.(2)Under the condition of SOA of 100 ms,the response of illiterate adults on the left visual field is longer than that on the right side,especially when the ratio of the clue is 5:5.And the difference of response time between left and right visual field is not significant for literate adults.While the SOA is 250 ms,the difference of response time between left and right visual field was also not significant for illiterate and literate adults.These results suggest that the lack of reading experience will affect the visuospatial attention orientation when processing is difficult(ie,when SOA is 100 ms).(3)The correct rate of illiterate subjects was significantly lower than that of literate adults when the motion speed was 1 or 5 deg/s at low motion coherence level(ie,10%and 20%).While the speed is 3 deg/s,the correct rates of illiterate subjects and literate adults were similar.These results indicate that lack of reading experience affects motion perception at low coherence levels when the motion speed was too slow(ie,1 deg/s)or too fast(ie,5 deg/s).(4)In short,reading experience affects the visual attention span,and in particular,influences visuospatial attention orientation and motion perception in visual space under specific conditions.These results suggest visual processing defects may be the effect of the impaired or inadequate reading experience.