Spatial orienting of attention in dyslexic adults using directional and alphabetic cues

Spatial attention performance was investigated in adults with dyslexia. Groups with and without dyslexia completed literacy/phonological tasks as well as two spatial cueing tasks, in which attention was oriented in response to a centrally presented pictorial (arrow) or alphabetic (letter) cue. Cued response times and orienting effects were largely similar in dyslexic and nonimpaired readers. The one distinct pattern that emerged showed dyslexic adults to have smaller orienting effects in the right than left visual field for letter cues, whereas typical readers showed the opposite pattern. These smaller orienting effects appeared to characterize the dyslexic group as a whole and not only one or two individuals. Our results suggest that dyslexic adults may have a subtle impairment in orienting visual attention when processing alphabetic (but not pictorial) cues. Several interpretations of these findings are considered, including links with a phonological deficit and/or a difficulty in shifting attention in the direction of reading.