Colour-mediated grouping effects in good and disabled readers

Specific deficits in the processing of transient visual stimuli have been identified in reading disabled children. It has, separately, been suggested that suitably chosen coloured lenses can be used to assist reading disabled children but this is controversial. To assess an hypothesis as to how coloured lenses might remediate visual processing, this study compared the visual perceptual grouping effects of eighteen disabled readers with those made by eighteen good readers of the same age. Perceptual grouping effects were obtained for each child under a normal condition and wearing blue, yellow, grey, red and green optical framed lenses. The results replicated previous work in demonstrating a larger grouping effect for the disabled readers, and it was suggested that this finding was consistent with the presence of a transient deficit in these children. Comparison of the grouping effects obtained using the coloured lenses showed that although there was no significant impact on the performances of the disabled readers, the blue lens significantly increased the size of the grouping effect for the good readers. The presence of the blue lens decreased the activity initiated by stimulation of the red and green cones relative to the level of activity initiated by blue cone stimulation. As blue cone initiated activity appears to play little part in the transfer of acuity information, the presence of the blue lens could depress performance in a normal visual system by decreasing the level of acuity information transfer (i.e., the information required for efficient selective attention sorting and minimizing the grouping effect).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)