Processing of tactile stimuli and implications for the reading disabled

A finger localization task was used to investigate interhemispheric transfer of tactile information and the processing of sequential tactile information in 7- and 9-year-old "average" readers and 9-year-old reading disabled boys. The performance of the reading disabled group on interhemispheric transfer and sequential processing was comparable to or worse than the 7-year-old average readers. Significant correlations linked the reading disabled boys' performance on the finger localisation task with their reading skills, performance on perceptual/motor tasks and knowledge of order in the time domain. The results are interpreted in terms of delayed myelination of interhemispheric and intrahemispheric pathways in the reading disabled.