The metrics of reading speed: understanding developmental dyslexia

We compared reading words and pseudo-words presented in single displays (as typical of psycholinguistic research) with stimuli presented in multiple displays (as typical of real-life conditions and clinical testing) under controlled conditions. Italian sixth-grade children with and without a reading deficit showed an advantage in reading times for multiple over single displays. This finding was partly ascribed to the capacity to overlap the non-decisional component of the response, an effect present in control readers as well as children with dyslexia. Furthermore, there were several indications in the data that the requirement to read sequentially taxes performance by augmenting the relative impact of the experimental manipulations used. This effect was present in both groups of children, but proportionally stronger in children with dyslexia. The study contributes to filling the gap between single and multiple displays, a condition more like real-life situations.