Around one in ten children in the UK have dyslexia (阅读障碍) which often causes reading difficulties. Reading requires the process of matching what we see on a page with spoken language and meaning. So reading difficulties could at least in part be caused by differences in how the brain makes sense of what we see.
In our recent study, children were presented with patterns of moving dots (圆点) in child-friendly games and asked to work out their overall direction. They had to press a button to say whether the dots were going " left" or " right" . We also studied children' s brain activity. Then we measured how correct the children were and how long they took to make their responses.
The results have shown that children with and without dyslexia didn' t seem to differ in how they first processed visual information, but instead differed in how they made decisions about it. Children with dyslexia seemed to see the moving dots just as easily as children without dyslexia, but took longer to decide in which direction they were moving. And when children made decisions on the direction of dot movement, brain activity in children with dyslexia increased more slowly.
Although words don' t move, differences in these motion (运动) tasks could influence children' s ability to read. That' s because the sounds that make up language change quickly over time—just like moving dots—so they depend on the brain processes that can discern these changes. If children with dyslexia are slower to make decisions about the direction of dot movement, they may also find it more difficult to tell apart sounds in spoken words. In turn, this could make reading more difficult as it is so dependent on spoken language and meaning.
The study is helping us to build a better picture of how the brain develops differently in children with dyslexia. Our findings prove that dyslexia could influence more than just a child' s reading ability. It is important that we all bear this in mind when supporting children with dyslexia.
