Perceptual consequences of a temporal processing deficit in reading disabled children.

Recent research suggests that some children who are reading disabled exhibit sensory deficits associated with poor temporal processing. The performance of disabled readers on various perceptual tasks is consistent with a temporal processing deficit hypothesis. Visual masking paradigms were utilized to obtain direct measures of the temporal aspects of processing in normal and disabled readers, and showed that the visual processing of disabled readers is characterized by a longer integration time and a slower processing rate for both simple and word-like stimuli. Image blurring, which reduces the contrast of high spatial frequencies, reestablished normal temporal processing of words in disabled readers.