No evidence for a prolonged attentional blink in developmental dyslexia

When two targets are presented within 500 msec of each other in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), the accuracy of second target identification is significantly reduced; a phenomenon termed the attentional blink. Recent studies have reported that children and adults with dyslexia exhibit deficits tied to the attentional blink; however, some ambiguity remains as to the nature of these impairments and how they relate to reading difficulties. The current study aimed to address these issues by examining attentional blink deficits in relation to orthographic, phonological, and fluency aspects of reading impairment. Twenty-two children with dyslexia were compared to 22 children with normally developing reading skills on an attentional blink task with results indicating the dyslexia group exhibited impaired performance regardless of the temporal lag between targets. These deficits appeared tied to general RSVP performance rather than a prolonged attentional blink and differences between groups fell below significance when the influence of general performance factors were controlled for.