Seminar Team AVA 22/06/2023

Titre: Dyslexia and the integration of sensory cues during reading and motor action

Besides difficulties in mastering literacy, dyslexic children also show poor postural control that might be related to how sensory cues coming from different sensory channels are integrated into proper motor activity. We have employed different tasks to understand how children with dyslexia use sensory information to produce motor actions. Children with dyslexia show poor performance and such performance is characterized by more variable behavior and less coherence related to the sensory cues. Interestingly, when the sensory cue (i.e., applied force to a touch bar) is enhanced, performance of children with dyslexia is similar to healthy children. Taken together, these results indicate that poor postural control performance in dyslexic children is related to impairments in how sensory information is acquired and used to produce postural responses. We have employed such approach to manipulate and enhance reading scenario (i.e., color manipulation), computer-based oculomotor training and sensory-motor intervention program. Results have shown that eye movements and reading performance have improved and constitute an important avenue of intervention towards minimizing all the difficulties shown by children with dyslexia.