ISSUES OF VISUAL ATTENTION AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS IN CHILDREN WITH DYSLEXIA

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability that affects 10-12% of population. The reading difficulties in dyslexia have neuronal basic and are associated to the problems with brain areas where visual information processing happens, and that are responsible for word analysis and for attention. Visual processing is essential for reading process but there is an ongoing discussion whether attentional deficits in dyslexia plays a role. In the present study we investigated development of visual attention and executive functions in Georgian children with dyslexia. Two groups of children aged between 7-12 years participated in the study: children with dyslexia and age and IQ (general intelligence) match typically developing children. Participants performed visual search task and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and were retested after a year from the first testing. We found no differences in performance (correct responses) of search task between two groups but there were differences in reaction time. Attentional functions improved with getting older in control children, that is confirmed by improvement of reaction time after one year. There were no changes in reaction time in dyslexic children indicating that attentional deficits are not compensated by developmental processes. No correlation was found for any of groups between performances of executive function task and search task. Significant correlation was found between performance of WCST and age of control children, but no correlation between performance of WCST and age of dyslexic children. These results indicate that common development of executive and attentional functions during childhood are different for control and dyslexic children. We conclude that in children with dyslexia ongoing developmental processes in general are slowed down that affects development of attentional and executive functions.