A Study Of Visual Attention Span Deficit In Chinese Developmental Dyslexia

Reading acquisition is highly related with individual's growth,but individuals with developmental dyslexia(DD)show difficulty in reading accuracy and reading fluency,which has further effect on their study and mental health.The prevalence of DD is approximately 3%-7%among children varying in different orthographies.Therefore,it is very important to find the reasons of dyslexia and intervene in reading acquisition.Individual's reading learning depends on the participation of vision and phonology,thus the visual theory and phonological theory in dyslexia have been debated for many years.However,there still lacks of researches in China,so the current study would exam this topic.Vision is very important in reading.Majorities of studies compared the dyslexia with control group and found that reduced visual attention span in dyslexia with normal phonological skills,so they argued that dyslexia comorbid with visual attention span deficit rather than phonological skills deficit.However,some researchers suggested that dyslexia with visual attention span deficit also comorbid with phonological deficit,so visual and phonological deficit couldn't be divided into two theories.Given to the specificity of Chinese characters,the current study aimed to test the role of visual attention span and phonological skills in Chinese developmental dyslexia.The present study adopted different research methods and data analysis to dig into the characteristics of visual and phonological theory.Study 1 employed the meta-analysis method to analyze 16 studies,which aimed to test whether the visual attention span deficit in dyslexia with different ages.Study 2 recruited 153 primary school students from Grade 4,5 and 6 and evaluated their visual attention span ability to explore whether children under different reading levels with different visual ability and visual attention span ability.Twenty-nine Chinese dyslexia and 36 age-matched control children participated in Study 3.The Study 3 aimed to find the relation between the visual attention span and phonological deficit in Chinese developmental dyslexia.The results showed that:1)dyslexia showed poor visual attention span than control group,but the difference only found in children with dyslexia,not in adults with dyslexia;2)visual attention span developed with age,and children under different reading level showed different visual attention span ability;3)41.4%Chinese dyslexia with visual attention span deficit,65.5%with phonological awareness deficit,48.3 with rapid automatized naming deficit,34.5%children with visual attention span and phonological deficits.The present study could draw conclusions as follows:1)poor visual attention span only found in children with dyslexia;2)visual attention span is highly related with reading level and developed with age;3)the visual attention span and phonological deficit cannot be independent,which supported the 'comorbid theory'.