Study title

This research investigates how differences in dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers' fluency are related to differences in how they process multiple items. When people read, they typically have to process multiple items (eg, letters within words). Research has shown that non-dyslexic readers are more fluent when reading or naming objects aloud when they are presented with more than one item (word or letter) at a time than when items are presented individually, suggesting that they process multiple consecutive items simultaneously. In contrast, dyslexic readers are less fluent when presented with more than one item. This research investigates why this might be so, focusing on three research questions: To what extent does processing for consecutive items overlap? How does such overlapping processing affect fluency? Which specific aspects of multi-item processing are impaired in dyslexia? The research involves recording dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers' eye-movements and voice responses as they name sequences of letters. They investigate whether recognition or retrieval of a letter is influenced by early processing of that letter before it is directly looked at, or by explicit processing once it is directly looked at. They also investigate whether processing is affected by cumulative early and later exposure to a letter.