The concept of a perceptual noise exclusion deficit is an emerging hypothesis as to the origins and nature of dyslexia. It is supported by research showing that dyslexic adults and children experience difficulty in targeting visual information in the presence of visual perceptual distractions, but subjects do not show the same impairment when the distracting factors are removed in an experimental setting. [1] Thus, some dyslexic symptoms appear to arise because of an impaired ability to filter out environmental distractions, and to categorize information so as to distinguish the important sensory data from the irrelevant.
The new research shows that differences in processing ability between dyslexic and non-dyslexic subjects for visual data occurs only in when there are environmental distractions. When the visual distractions were removed, the dyslexic subjects showed no sign of impairment. Further, exposure to external visual noise produced the same level of impairment in dyslexic subjects regardless of the speed of the task being tested.
The researchers have also found that dyslexic children and adults have difficulty forming perceptual categories, such as those involved in distinguishing printed letters and speech sounds, or in deducing rules for sorting of geometrical shapes. [2] This difficulty appears to be closely related to the difficulty with filtering ambient data and focusing on relevant factors while disregarding irrelevant distractors. External noise interferes with the ability of dyslexic subjects to recognize patterns; the lack of a pattern-based template for interpretation of sensory information in turn may make it difficult to judge the relative importance and relevancy of details as they are perceived.
The presence a perceptual noise exclusion deficit has been further demonstrated in the auditory domain. Researchers found a speech perception deficit in dyslexic subjects which was present in noise but absent in silence. [3]
This hypothesis is supported by a study showing dyslexic subjects in comparison to non-dyslexic subjects in the research sample were less responsive to cueing in a visual discrimination task, suggesting that the dyslexics had greater difficulty than controls with prioritizing certain visual information based on previous exposure. The researchers also found that performance on the cueing task could be a more accurate means of discerning dyslexic from normal readers in comparison to the range of other psychophysical tasks typically used in dyslexia research. [4]
Dyslexia, previously known as word blindness, is a learning disability that affects either reading or writing. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. The difficulties are involuntary, and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn. People with dyslexia have higher rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), developmental language disorders, and difficulties with numbers.
Attention is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is a process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective. William James (1890) wrote that "Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence." Attention has also been described as the allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is manifested by an attentional bottleneck, in terms of the amount of data the brain can process each second; for example, in human vision, only less than 1% of the visual input data can enter the bottleneck, leading to inattentional blindness.
Agnosia is the inability to process sensory information. Often there is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss. It is usually associated with brain injury or neurological illness, particularly after damage to the occipitotemporal border, which is part of the ventral stream. Agnosia only affects a single modality, such as vision or hearing. More recently, a top-down interruption is considered to cause the disturbance of handling perceptual information.
The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound. The visual information a person gets from seeing a person speak changes the way they hear the sound. If a person is getting poor-quality auditory information but good-quality visual information, they may be more likely to experience the McGurk effect. Integration abilities for audio and visual information may also influence whether a person will experience the effect. People who are better at sensory integration have been shown to be more susceptible to the effect. Many people are affected differently by the McGurk effect based on many factors, including brain damage and other disorders.
Iconic memory is the visual sensory memory register pertaining to the visual domain and a fast-decaying store of visual information. It is a component of the visual memory system which also includes visual short-term memory (VSTM) and long-term memory (LTM). Iconic memory is described as a very brief, pre-categorical, high capacity memory store. It contributes to VSTM by providing a coherent representation of our entire visual perception for a very brief period of time. Iconic memory assists in accounting for phenomena such as change blindness and continuity of experience during saccades. Iconic memory is no longer thought of as a single entity but instead, is composed of at least two distinctive components. Classic experiments including Sperling's partial report paradigm as well as modern techniques continue to provide insight into the nature of this SM store.
Sensory overload occurs when one or more of the body's senses experiences over-stimulation from the environment.
A reading disability is a condition in which a person displays difficulty reading. Examples of reading disabilities include: developmental dyslexia, And alexia,
Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted, and understood. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonology and phonetics in linguistics and cognitive psychology and perception in psychology. Research in speech perception seeks to understand how human listeners recognize speech sounds and use this information to understand spoken language. Speech perception research has applications in building computer systems that can recognize speech, in improving speech recognition for hearing- and language-impaired listeners, and in foreign-language teaching.
Irlen spectral filters or Irlen lenses are coloured overlay filters or tinted lenses crafted specifically for the wearer and worn as glasses or contact lenses. They are intended to help people with the supposed perceptual processing difficulty known as Irlen syndrome, also known as scotopic sensitivity syndrome or visual stress, in which sensitivity to specific wavelengths of light provokes difficulty and discomfort when performing visually intensive activities such as reading. The existence of Irlen syndrome is controversial. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists (RANZCO) came out strongly against Irlen syndrome, saying there was no evidence the condition existed or the treatment of reading difficulties with Irlen lenses worked. However, there is a small body of research supporting the use of colour to alleviate the symptoms associated with Irlen syndrome.
Auditory processing disorder (APD), rarely known as King-Kopetzky syndrome or auditory disability with normal hearing (ADN), is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the way the brain processes sounds. Individuals with APD usually have normal structure and function of the outer, middle, and inner ear. However, they cannot process the information they hear in the same way as others do, which leads to difficulties in recognizing and interpreting sounds, especially the sounds composing speech. It is thought that these difficulties arise from dysfunction in the central nervous system. This is, in part, essentially a failure of the cocktail party effect found in most people.
Dichotic pitch is a pitch heard due to binaural processing, when the brain combines two noises presented simultaneously to the ears. In other words, it cannot be heard when the sound stimulus is presented monaurally but, when it is presented binaurally a sensation of a pitch can be heard. The binaural stimulus is presented to both ears through headphones simultaneously, and is the same in several respects except for a narrow frequency band that is manipulated. The most common variation is the Huggins Pitch, which presents white-noise that only differ in the interaural phase relation over a narrow range of frequencies. For humans, this phenomenon is restricted to fundamental frequencies lower than 330 Hz and extremely low sound pressure levels. Experts investigate the effects of the dichotic pitch on the brain. For instance, there are studies that suggested it evokes activation at the lateral end of Heschl's gyrus.
Apperceptive agnosia is a failure in recognition that is due to a failure of perception. In contrast, associative agnosia is a type of agnosia where perception occurs but recognition still does not occur. When referring to apperceptive agnosia, visual and object agnosia are most commonly discussed; this occurs because apperceptive agnosia is most likely to present visual impairments. However, in addition to visual apperceptive agnosia there are also cases of apperceptive agnosia in other sensory areas.
Deep dyslexia is a form of dyslexia that disrupts reading processes. Deep dyslexia may occur as a result of a head injury, stroke, disease, or operation. This injury results in the occurrence of semantic errors during reading and the impairment of nonword reading.
Language-based learning disabilities or LBLD are "heterogeneous" neurological differences that can affect skills such as listening, reasoning, speaking, reading, writing, and math calculations. It is also associated with movement, coordination, and direct attention. LBLD is not usually identified until the child reaches school age. Most people with this disability find it hard to communicate, to express ideas efficiently and what they say may be ambiguous and hard to understand It is a neurological difference. It is often hereditary, and is frequently associated to specific language problems.
The history of dyslexia research spans from the late 1800s to the present.
Dyslexia is a reading disorder wherein an individual experiences trouble with reading. Individuals with dyslexia have normal levels of intelligence but can exhibit difficulties with spelling, reading fluency, pronunciation, "sounding out" words, writing out words, and reading comprehension. The neurological nature and underlying causes of dyslexia are an active area of research. However, some experts believe that the distinction of dyslexia as a separate reading disorder and therefore recognized disability is a topic of some controversy.
Perceptual learning is learning better perception skills such as differentiating two musical tones from one another or categorizations of spatial and temporal patterns relevant to real-world expertise. Examples of this may include reading, seeing relations among chess pieces, and knowing whether or not an X-ray image shows a tumor.
A phantom contour is a type of illusory contour. Most illusory contours are seen in still images, such as the Kanizsa triangle and the Ehrenstein illusion. A phantom contour, however, is perceived in the presence of moving or flickering images with contrast reversal. The rapid, continuous alternation between opposing, but correlated, adjacent images creates the perception of a contour that is not physically present in the still images. Quaid et al. have also authored a PhD thesis on the phantom contour illusion and its spatiotemporal limits which maps out limits and proposes mechanisms for its perception centering around magnocellularly driven visual area MT.
Perceptual load theory is a psychological theory of attention. It was presented by Nilli Lavie in the mid-nineties as a potential resolution to the early/late selection debate.
Visual selective attention is a brain function that controls the processing of retinal input based on whether it is relevant or important. It selects particular representations to enter perceptual awareness and therefore guide behaviour. Through this process, less relevant information is suppressed.