[PS-1.20] Perceptive deficits in pre-school children at risk for dyslexia

ORTIZ, R. ¹ , Dominguez, C. ¹ , Estévez, A. ¹ & Muñetón, M. ²

1 UNIVERSITY OF LA LAGUNA
2 UNIVERSITY OF ANTIOQUIA

The aim of this study is to explore visual and auditory perception in children at risk for dyslexia. Recently, there has been renewed interest in perceptive problems of dyslexics. A polemic issue in research of dyslexics' perception is the nature of the deficit. It is questioned whether the perceptual deficit is specific to temporal processing. Another issue is the causal role of perceptive deficit in dyslexia. Most studies have been carried out in adults and children literates; consequently, the observed deficits may be the result rather than the cause of dyslexia. In order to answer these questions, 36 children at risk for dyslexia (RD) and 36 without risk for dyslexia (NRD) from kindergarten (i.e., just before the initiation of formal reading instruction) were tested on visual and auditory tasks of temporal order judgment (TOJ) and discrimination tasks (S/D). The results show an interaction Group (RD vs. NRD) x Modality (auditory vs. visual) x Task (TOJ vs. I-D). The children at risk for dyslexia, in visual and auditory modalities, perform poorer in tasks requiring temporal processing than discrimination tasks; while there were no differences between auditory temporal and discrimination tasks in the control group. Findings reveal that visual and auditory perceptive processing problems are present in children at risk for dyslexia and that the auditory perceptive deficit is specific to temporal processing. The present study suggests a causal link between temporal perceptual auditory deficits and dyslexia, as set out in the temporal processing theory.