Deficits in working memory visual-phonological binding in children with dyslexia

Learning to read involves cross-modal binding processes, that is, the association between visual and phonological information in the mapping of written forms (graphemes) to phonological codes. The present study examined visual-phonological binding in a memory binding task, comparing a group of children with dyslexia with a control group of typical readers, matched for age, grade, and sex. Children were required to memorize the association between 8 shapes and nonwords presented in association for 4 times, placed either in fixed or variable spatial locations across trials. The results showed that children with dyslexia have deficits in cross-modal memory binding and are not able to use spatial location as an effective cue to bind information, as it was observed for control children. In addition, children with dyslexia made more phonological errors and binding errors than the control group. A purely phonological deficit in dyslexia does not explain the overall pattern of results, and dyslexia may involve deficits in 1 or more types of processes, including the capacity to bind visual to phonological information. Thus, assessment of binding processes may have implications both for diagnosis and treatment.