Object Naming in Dyslexic Children: More Than a Phonological Deficit

ABSTRACT

In the present study, the authors investigate how some visual factors related to early stages of visual-object naming modulate naming performance in dyslexia. The performance of dyslexic children was compared with 2 control groups—normal readers matched for age and normal readers matched for reading level—while performing a discrete naming task in which color and dimensionality of the visually presented objects were manipulated. The results showed that 2-dimensional naming performance improved for color representations in control readers but not in dyslexics. In contrast to control readers, dyslexics were also insensitive to the stimulus's dimensionality. These findings are unlikely to be explained by a phonological processing problem related to phonological access or retrieval but suggest that dyslexics have a lower capacity for coding and decoding visual surface features of 2-dimensional representations or problems with the integration of visual information stored in long-term memory.

Keywords:

• dyslexia
• object naming
• phonology
• visual processing

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/ 28488/2006, PTDC/PSI/64920/2006, PTDC/PSI-PCO/110734/2009, IBB/CBME, LA, FEDER/POCI 2010), the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, and the Swedish Dyslexia Foundation.