Although developmental dyslexia (DD) is frequently associate to a phonological deficit, the underlying neurobiological cause remain undetermined. One prominent hypothesis suggests a specific deficit in magnocellular-dorsal (M-D) pathway. Here we investigated the visual M-D and parvocellular-ventral (P-V) pathway in dyslexic and in chronological age and IQ-matched normally reading children by measuring dynamic (frequency doubling illusion) and static stimuli sensibility, respectively. A specific deficit in M-D task was found. Importantly, the M-D deficit was selectively shown in poor phonological decoders. M-D deficit (...) appears to be frequent because 75% of poor pseudo-word readers were at least 1 SD below the mean of the controls. Finally, a replication study by using a new group of poor phonological decoders and reading level controls suggests a possible role of M-D deficit in DD. These results showed that a M-D deficit might impair the sub-lexical mechanisms that are critical for reading development. The possible link between these findings and the oscillatory “temporal sampling” framework is discussed. (shrink)

What do people consciously experience when they read? There has been almost no rigorous research on this question, and opinions diverge radically among both philosophers and psychologists. We describe three studies of the phenomenology of reading and its relationship to memory of textual detail and general cognitive abilities. We find three main results. First, there is substantial variability in reports about reading experience, both within and between participants. Second, reported reading experience varies with passage type: passages with dialogue prompted increased (...) reports of inner speech, while passages with vivid visual detail prompted increased reports of visual imagery. Third, reports of visual imagery experiences, inner speech experiences, and experiences of conscious visual perception of the words on the page were at best weakly related to general cognitive abilities and memory of visual and auditory details. (shrink)