Visuospatial attention in pre-schoolers predicts reading acquisition

Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a neurobiological disorder characterized by difficulty in reading acquisition despite adequate intelligence, conventional education and motivation. Impaired phonological processing is widely assumed to characterize dyslexic individuals. However, emerging evidence indicates that phonological problems and reading impairment both arise from poor visuo-orthographic coding. Reading acquisition, indeed, requires rapid selection of sublexical orthographic units through serial attentional orienting, and recent studies have shown that visuospatial attention is impaired not only in children with dyslexia but also in pre-readers at risk of dyslexia. The causal role of both phonological and visuospatial attention processing on reading acquisition was investigated in eighty-two pre-reader children. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that, although chronological age and nonverbal IQ as well as phonological processing were controlled for, pre-reading measures of visual parietal-attention functioning, as assessed by rapid peripheral object perception, spatial cueing facilitation and serial search skill, predict early literacy skills in Grade 1 and 2. Our findings provide evidence that—independently from the core phonological deficit—a visuo-attentional dysfunction may play a crucial role in reading failure, suggesting a new approach for a more efficient prevention of developmental dyslexia.