Are There Lower Repetition Priming Effects in Children with Developmental Dyslexia? Priming Effects in Spanish with the Masked Lexical Decision Task

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to compare the reaction times and errors of Spanish children with developmental dyslexia to the reaction times and errors of readers without dyslexia on a masked lexical decision task with identity or repetition priming. A priming paradigm was used to study the role of the lexical deficit in dyslexic children, manipulating the frequency and length of the words, with a short Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA = 150 ms) and degraded stimuli. The sample consisted of 80 participants from 9 to 14 years old, divided equally into a group with a developmental dyslexia diagnosis and a control group without dyslexia. Results show that identity priming is higher in control children (133 ms) than in dyslexic children (55 ms). Thus, the “frequency” and “word length” variables are not the source or origin of this reduction in identity priming reaction times in children with developmental dyslexia compared to control children.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental dyslexia
• frequency effect
• identity priming
• length effect
• masked lexical decision task
• repetition priming
• stimulus onset asynchrony

Author notes

Francisco Nievas-Cazorla, PhD, is a professor of developmental and educational psychology at the University of Almería (Spain). His current research interests include techniques for evaluating visual-word recognition, reading and memory. Manuel Soriano-Ferrer, PhD, is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Valencia (Spain). His research interests include techniques for evaluating and training children with specific reading disabilities and children with attention deficit disorder. Pilar Sánchez-López, PhD, is a professor of developmental and educational psychology at the University of Almería (Spain) with interests in the study of reading and literacy in children with special needs.

Funding

The research reported was made possible by support from the Plan Nacional I+D+i of Spain (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) under Ref.: EDU2012-35786.