Academic Journal
Visual processing and dyslexia: evidence from stress marker assignment in Greek.
| Title: | Visual processing and dyslexia: evidence from stress marker assignment in Greek. |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Vasilopoulou I; University of Essex, United Kingdom. Electronic address: ioanna.vasilopoulou@essex.ac.uk., Niolaki G; University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Electronic address: g.z.niolaki@bham.ac.uk., Terzopoulos A; Birmingham City University, United Kingdom. Electronic address: Aris.Terzopoulos@bcu.ac.uk. |
| Source: | Journal of experimental child psychology [J Exp Child Psychol] 2026 Sep; Vol. 269, pp. 106541. Date of Electronic Publication: 2026 May 10. |
| Publication Type: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Journal Info: | Publisher: Academic Press Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 2985128R Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1096-0457 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 00220965 NLM ISO Abbreviation: J Exp Child Psychol Subsets: MEDLINE |
| Imprint Name(s): | Publication: New York, NY : Academic Press Original Publication: New York. |
| MeSH Terms: | Dyslexia*/physiopathology , Dyslexia*/rehabilitation , Visual Perception*/physiology , Pattern Recognition, Visual*/physiology , Reading*, Humans ; Female ; Child ; Male ; Greece |
| Abstract: | The present exploratory study investigated whether targeted visual intervention can improve stress assignment during oral reading in children with developmental dyslexia. The Greek orthography uniquely marks lexical stress with a diacritic visual mark, allowing testing in-text sensitivity to identify fine visual-linguistic information. A total of one hundred participants took part in the study. Seventy children with developmental dyslexia (Mean age = 9.3, SD = 1.07) were assigned to attend either a visual or an auditory single-session intervention. The visual stimuli consisted of visual discrimination and crowding tasks aiming to enhance visual processing abilities, whereas the auditory stimuli comprised matched discrimination and crowding tasks. Data were collected from pre- and post-test oral reading tests, and error types were analysed and compared to a control group (N = 30, Mean age = 9.7, SD = 0.8). Results revealed a significant improvement in lexical stress assignment after the visual single-session exposure, with no significant changes in segmental errors or fluency. These findings suggest that visual intervention may improve the decoding of fine orthographic features, especially in transparent orthographies where visual markers carry critical linguistic weight. The study highlights the role of visual-based interventions as a complementary approach to support the reading development of children with dyslexia. (Copyright © 2026 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.) |
| Competing Interests: | Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. |
| Contributed Indexing: | Keywords: Developmental Dyslexia; Lexical stress; Oral reading; Single-session exposure; Visual processing |
| Entry Date(s): | Date Created: 20260511 Date Completed: 20260716 Latest Revision: 20260716 |
| Update Code: | 20260717 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jecp.2026.106541 |
| PMID: | 42114332 |
| Database: | MEDLINE |
Be the first to leave a comment!