a Department of General Psychology, University of Padova , Italy.
b CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil , Brasília , Brazil.
Child Neuropsychol. 2019 Nov;25(8):1063-1083. doi: 10.1080/09297049.2019.1572729. Epub 2019 Feb 1.
Reading decoding requires the association of a visual input (the printed word) with a verbal output (the spoken word), and the learning of visual-phonological associations via repeated exposure occurs both explicitly (by instruction and training) and implicitly (by exposure to written material). However, a general ability to implicitly learn visual-phonological associations (or cross-modal bindings) in children with reading difficulties (RD) has not been deeply explored. The present paper examined this issue in two studies comparing groups of children with RD with matched groups of control children in a working memory binding task involving sequences of variable combinations of nonsense shapes and nonwords (odd trials), as well as fixed combinations (even trials). Stimuli presentation was followed by a recognition test in which the nonwords were given one at a time and the children were required to mouse click on their respective shapes. In Study 1, fixed bindings were presented in random sequences across even trials, and the recognition test presented the nonwords at random. In Study 2, fixed bindings were presented in the same order across even trials, and the recognition test presented the nonwords following the same sequence order. In both studies, a consistent and strong learning effect of fixed bindings was observed for the control groups, with significantly better performance than the groups with RD. Such results suggest that poor cross-modal binding learning is associated with reading difficulties. Implications for the study and treatment of dyslexia are discussed.
阅读解码需要将视觉输入（印刷文字）与口头输出（口头单词）联系起来，通过反复暴露，视觉-语音联想的学习既可以通过明确的（通过指导和培训），也可以通过隐含的（通过接触书面材料）方式发生。然而，阅读困难（RD）儿童是否具有隐含地学习视觉-语音联想（或跨模态绑定）的一般能力，尚未得到深入探讨。本文通过两项研究来研究这个问题，将 RD 儿童与对照组儿童在涉及各种随机组合的无意义形状和非单词（奇数试验）以及固定组合（偶数试验）序列的工作记忆绑定任务中进行了比较。刺激呈现后，进行识别测试，一次呈现一个非单词，要求孩子们点击相应的形状。在研究 1 中，固定绑定在偶数试验中随机序列呈现，识别测试以随机方式呈现非单词。在研究 2 中，固定绑定在偶数试验中按相同顺序呈现，识别测试按相同的序列顺序呈现非单词。在两项研究中，对照组都观察到了固定绑定的一致且强烈的学习效应，表现明显优于 RD 组。这些结果表明，跨模态绑定学习能力差与阅读困难有关。讨论了对阅读障碍的研究和治疗的影响。
