Deficits of motion transparency perception in adult developmental dyslexics with normal unidirectional motion sensitivity.

We assessed motion integration ability in seven adult developmental dyslexics using unidirectional and bidirectional (transparent) random dot kinematograms (RDKs) that varied in the number of frames. All adult dyslexics performed as well as normally reading age-matched controls with unidirectional RDKs, regardless of frame number. However, using orthogonal motion transparent stimuli, deficits were obvious in six dyslexics and depended on frame number. Whereas controls needed on average only 4.4 frames (144 ms) to identify both directions correctly on 75% of presentations, dyslexics needed on average 14.6 frames (483 ms) to achieve this level of performance. Even though a unidirectional motion task failed to reveal processing abnormalities in adult dyslexics, the motion transparency task was effective at revealing significant perceptual dysfunction, suggesting that performance on this task is a better psychophysical indicator of visual motion deficits in dyslexia. This finding provides little support for the magnocellular deficit hypothesis and, rather, points to abnormality within dorsal extrastriate cortical areas that subserve the integration and segmentation of complex motion signals.