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      The Role of Visual Processing Speed in Reading Speed Development

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          Abstract

          A steady increase in reading speed is the hallmark of normal reading acquisition. However, little is known of the influence of visual attention capacity on children's reading speed. The number of distinct visual elements that can be simultaneously processed at a glance (dubbed the visual attention span), predicts single-word reading speed in both normal reading and dyslexic children. However, the exact processes that account for the relationship between the visual attention span and reading speed remain to be specified. We used the Theory of Visual Attention to estimate visual processing speed and visual short-term memory capacity from a multiple letter report task in eight and nine year old children. The visual attention span and text reading speed were also assessed. Results showed that visual processing speed and visual short term memory capacity predicted the visual attention span. Furthermore, visual processing speed predicted reading speed, but visual short term memory capacity did not. Finally, the visual attention span mediated the effect of visual processing speed on reading speed. These results suggest that visual attention capacity could constrain reading speed in elementary school children.

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          Most cited references38

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          The unique role of the visual word form area in reading.

          Reading systematically activates the left lateral occipitotemporal sulcus, at a site known as the visual word form area (VWFA). This site is reproducible across individuals/scripts, attuned to reading-specific processes, and partially selective for written strings relative to other categories such as line drawings. Lesions affecting the VWFA cause pure alexia, a selective deficit in word recognition. These findings must be reconciled with the fact that human genome evolution cannot have been influenced by such a recent and culturally variable activity as reading. Capitalizing on recent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments, we provide strong corroborating evidence for the hypothesis that reading acquisition partially recycles a cortical territory evolved for object and face recognition, the prior properties of which influenced the form of writing systems. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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            SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models.

            Researchers often conduct mediation analysis in order to indirectly assess the effect of a proposed cause on some outcome through a proposed mediator. The utility of mediation analysis stems from its ability to go beyond the merely descriptive to a more functional understanding of the relationships among variables. A necessary component of mediation is a statistically and practically significant indirect effect. Although mediation hypotheses are frequently explored in psychological research, formal significance tests of indirect effects are rarely conducted. After a brief overview of mediation, we argue the importance of directly testing the significance of indirect effects and provide SPSS and SAS macros that facilitate estimation of the indirect effect with a normal theory approach and a bootstrap approach to obtaining confidence intervals, as well as the traditional approach advocated by Baron and Kenny (1986). We hope that this discussion and the macros will enhance the frequency of formal mediation tests in the psychology literature. Electronic copies of these macros may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society's Web archive at www.psychonomic.org/archive/.
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              How learning to read changes the cortical networks for vision and language.

              Does literacy improve brain function? Does it also entail losses? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured brain responses to spoken and written language, visual faces, houses, tools, and checkers in adults of variable literacy (10 were illiterate, 22 became literate as adults, and 31 were literate in childhood). As literacy enhanced the left fusiform activation evoked by writing, it induced a small competition with faces at this location, but also broadly enhanced visual responses in fusiform and occipital cortex, extending to area V1. Literacy also enhanced phonological activation to speech in the planum temporale and afforded a top-down activation of orthography from spoken inputs. Most changes occurred even when literacy was acquired in adulthood, emphasizing that both childhood and adult education can profoundly refine cortical organization.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2013
                4 April 2013
                : 8
                : 4
                : e58097
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, CNRS -UMR 5105, Université Pierre-Mendès-France, Grenoble, France
                [2 ]Laboratoire Langage, Cognition et Développement, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium
                [3 ]National Fund for Scientific Research, FRS-FNRS, Bruxelles, Belgium
                University of British Columbia, Canada
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: ML MD SV. Performed the experiments: ML. Analyzed the data: ML MD. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: MD. Wrote the paper: ML MD SV.

                Article
                PONE-D-12-15240
                10.1371/journal.pone.0058097
                3617167
                23593117
                9c085efc-e656-4aa0-a35d-0931fb37fe75
                Copyright @ 2013

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 30 May 2012
                : 31 January 2013
                Page count
                Pages: 10
                Funding
                ML was supported by a grant from the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (VASRA N ANR_07-BLAN-0019). MD is funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, Belgium. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Neuroscience
                Cognition
                Sensory Perception
                Psychophysics
                Sensory Systems
                Visual System
                Medicine
                Mental Health
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Learning
                Pediatrics
                Developmental and Pediatric Neurology
                Social and Behavioral Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Learning
                Psychophysics
                Sensory Perception

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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