Dyslexia Research and the Partial Report Task: A First Step toward Acknowledging Iconic and Visual Short-term Memory

摘要

The potential role of iconic memory in dyslexia-specific partial report deficits has never been investigated although it may help distinguish between different visuo-attentional theories of dyslexia. The present study is a first step towards such an investigation within an iconic memory framework. 20 French-speaking university students with dyslexia and 20 controls were administered the partial report task. Five-item strings were displayed for a short duration and participants had to report one item in a cued position (post-cueing condition). A pre-cueing condition was used to control for potential visual and attentional differences in letter identification performance between the dyslexic and control groups. The group difference in accuracy was larger in the post-cueing condition than in the pre-cueing condition. This suggests that crowding and symbol-sound mapping are not causing the dyslexia-specific deficit in partial report tasks, and that iconic memory is a plausible interpretative framework for visuo-attentional deficits in dyslexia.