Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2024 Jan;86(1):312-325. doi: 10.3758/s13414-023-02753-x. Epub 2023 Jul 6.
Word-centred neglect dyslexia is most commonly conceptualised as a deficit caused by attentional biases within spatially coded internal representations of words. However, recent research has suggested that at least some cases of word-centred neglect dyslexia are unrelated to visuospatial neglect and may instead be modulated by self-inhibition and lexical factors. Here, we set out to provide novel insight into potential underlying mechanisms modulating the occurrence of word-centred lateralised reading errors in healthy participants. A sample of 47 healthy readers completed a novel attentional cueing paradigm in which they sequentially identified lateral cues and read presented words under limited exposure conditions. Reading responses were analysed to determine whether word-centred neglect dyslexia could be simulated in healthy readers, to compare the strengths of induced biases, and to identify systematic differences in lexical characteristics between target words and neglect dyslexia reading errors. Healthy participants produced frequent lateralised reading errors in both horizontal and vertical reading stimuli with > 50% of errors classed as neglect dyslexic. Cues appended to word beginnings elicited significantly more reading errors than cues at word ends, illustrating the interaction between existing reading spatial attentional biases and cue-induced biases. Neglect dyslexia reading errors were found to contain significantly more letters per word and had higher concreteness ratings than target words. These findings demonstrate that word-centred neglect dyslexia can be simulated using attentional cues in healthy readers. These results provide important insight into the mechanisms underlying word-centred neglect dyslexia and further fundamental understanding of this syndrome.
以词为中心的忽视性失读症通常被概念化为由于空间编码的单词内部表示中的注意力偏差引起的缺陷。然而，最近的研究表明，至少有一些以词为中心的忽视性失读症与视觉空间忽视无关，而可能是由自我抑制和词汇因素调节的。在这里，我们旨在为健康参与者中调节以词为中心的侧化阅读错误发生的潜在机制提供新的见解。我们的样本由 47 名健康读者组成，他们完成了一个新颖的注意力提示范式，在该范式中，他们依次识别侧向提示，并在有限的暴露条件下阅读呈现的单词。分析阅读反应以确定是否可以在健康读者中模拟以词为中心的忽视性失读症，比较诱导偏差的强度，并确定目标单词和忽视性失读症阅读错误之间词汇特征的系统差异。健康参与者在水平和垂直阅读刺激中都产生了频繁的侧化阅读错误，超过 50%的错误被归类为忽视性失读症。附加在单词开头的提示比附加在单词末尾的提示引起更多的阅读错误，这说明了现有的阅读空间注意力偏差与提示诱导偏差之间的相互作用。发现忽视性失读症阅读错误的每个单词中的字母数明显更多，并且具体性评分更高。这些发现表明，可以使用健康读者的注意力提示来模拟以词为中心的忽视性失读症。这些结果为以词为中心的忽视性失读症的机制提供了重要的见解，并进一步加深了对这种综合征的基本理解。
