Dorsal stream modulation of visual word recognition in skilled readers

We examined the hypothesis of a visual magnocellular involvement in intact reading, by testing a group of skilled readers in lateralized versions of coherent motion detection and lexical decision tasks. Motion detection thresholds were used to divide subjects into groups of poor and good motion detectors, their performance in lexical judgment of four letter string types was then compared. Although all subjects were skilled readers, good motion detectors were significantly faster than poor motion detectors when responding to words presented to the right visual field. We propose a role for the dorsal stream in facilitation of word recognition in LH language areas.