Acquired Phonological Dyslexia in Spanish: a Study with Eye Movements

MARÍA ELINA SÁNCHEZ; SHALÓM, DIEGO; JAICHENCO, VIRGINIA

Workshop; Summer Neurolinguistics School. Workshop; 2021

The aim of this work was to study the differences in the pattern of eye movements between people with acquired dyslexia (PWAD) and healthy people (HP), all native Spanish speakers, to understand the cognitive processes underlying. As research with this technique in PWAD is limited, our purpose is to study the ocular strategies used by people with reading impairments. A sentence reading task, where length (long and short) and frequency (high and low) of a critical noun were manipulated to create four experimental conditions of 20 sentences each, was designed. All sentences have the same grammatical structure with a critical word in a fixed position. Four PWAD diagnosed with acquired phonological dyslexia and five HP matched in age and educational level participated in the study. Eye movements were registered. The general results showed that PWAD presented a pattern of ocular behavior different from HP in time and localization measures. Compared to HP group, 3 PWAD showed more fixation time, not skipping behavior, and progressive/regressive pattern of refixations. Also, they always fixed early, near the beginning of the word. Contrary, the fourth patient (BG) seems to read in a very different way, she skipped words abnormally more than controls and other patients, showed a constant regressive pattern, fixed later near the end of the words and presented saccades longer than other groups.The pattern of eye movements can be explained by the EZ Reader Model. It assumes that in reading the eyes and visual attention are focused on one word (n) and word identification processes are performed. Programming of the saccade to word n + 1 begins with successful orthographic recognition (familiarity check) and movement of attention to word n + 1 is triggered by accessing word phonology and meaning (lexical completion). Based on the EZ Reader Model, the group of PWAD ´s performance could reveal a slow lexical access. The consequences would be more fixation time, lack of skips, and refixations, modulated by frequency. It is more difficult to analyze the ocular pattern of BG, despite being a person with phonological dyslexia as well. In sum, these findings allow us to suggest the usefulness of this technique for clinical purposes, in order to understand the reading strategies of the patients and to guide the rehabilitation.