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Dyslexia and the failure to form a perceptual anchor

Nature Neuroscience volume 9, pages 1558–1564 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

In a large subgroup of dyslexic individuals (D-LDs), reading difficulties are part of a broader learning and language disability. Recent studies indicate that D-LDs perform poorly in many psychoacoustic tasks compared with individuals with normal reading ability. We found that D-LDs perform as well as normal readers in speech perception in noise and in a difficult tone comparison task. However, their performance did not improve when these same tasks were performed with a smaller stimulus set. In contrast to normal readers, they did not benefit from stimulus-specific repetitions, suggesting that they have difficulties forming perceptual anchors. These findings are inconsistent with previously suggested static models of dyslexia. Instead, we propose that D-LDs' core deficit is a general difficulty in dynamically constructing stimulus-specific predictions, deriving from deficient stimulus-specific adaptation mechanisms. This hypothesis provides a direct link between D-LDs' high-level difficulties and mechanisms at the level of specific neuronal circuits.

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Figure 1: Study I: frequency discrimination JNDs with and without stimulus repetition across trials among D-LDs and control individuals.
Figure 2: Correlation between frequency discrimination thresholds and working memory scores (digits backward test).
Figure 3: Speech perception thresholds of D-LDs and control individuals for large and small stimulus sets.
Figure 4: Fraction of 'within-set' speech perception errors as a function of block number.
Figure 5: Perception and memory measured by pseudoword list repetition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. Nahum, M. Shovman, A. Rokem and S. Greenberg for their help at various stages of this project. We thank S. Hochstein and E. Ahissar for comments on the manuscript. This study was supported by the Israel Science Foundation–Center of Excellence Grant, the Volkswagen Foundation and the Israeli Institute for Psychobiology.

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Author notes

  1. Hanna Putter-Katz

    Present address: Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Speech & Hearing Center, Tel Hashomer, 52620, Israel

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Merav Ahissar

  2. Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Merav Ahissar & Hanna Putter-Katz

  3. Department of Cognitive Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Yedida Lubin

  4. Department of Neurobiology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Karen Banai

  5. Department of Communication Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Karen Banai

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  1. Merav Ahissar
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  4. Karen Banai
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Contributions

M.A. supervised the project and wrote the manuscript; Y.L. conducted Study II, statistical analyses and proofreading; H.P.-K. co-administered Study I and designed the nonadaptive speech perception test and K.B. designed, administered and analyzed the frequency discrimination tests.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Merav Ahissar.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ahissar, M., Lubin, Y., Putter-Katz, H. et al. Dyslexia and the failure to form a perceptual anchor. Nat Neurosci 9, 1558–1564 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1800

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