Selective magnocellular deficits in dyslexia: a "phantom contour" study.

A technique by Rogers-Ramachandran and Ramachandran [Vis. Res. 38 (1998) 71-77] was adapted to evaluate magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) visual processing efficiency, with identical task structure, in normal and dyslexic children. A battery of phonological, orthographic and cognitive tasks was administered to assess reading ability and component reading skills in both groups. For the visual processing experiment, children identified shapes created by patterns of dots flickering in counter-phase. The dots were black and white in the M condition, versus isoluminant red and green in the P condition. A staircase procedure determined the children's threshold flicker rate for shape identification. Dyslexics displayed selectively slower visual processing in the M condition but not in the P condition. Across all subjects, performance in the M condition was correlated with measures of orthographic skill, consistent with previous findings linking M processing and orthographic skill. Within the dyslexic group, processing in the M condition was negatively correlated with level of phonological awareness. The results are not consistent with the argument that dyslexics with phonological impairments suffer from deficits across all sensory modalities, as those children with the poorest phonological awareness displayed magnocellular processing well within the normal range.