Peripheral Vision in Persons with Dyslexia

Abstract

We compared persons with dyslexia and normal readers with respect to how well they identified letters and short strings of letters briefly presented in the peripheral visual field at the same time that a single letter was presented at the fixation point of gaze. We found that the dyslexic subjects had a markedly wider area in which correct identification occurred in the peripheral field than did the normal readers. However, the dyslexie subjects had a "masking" between letters in the foveal field and letters in the near periphery. It appears that dyslexic persons learn to read outside the foveal field and, more generally, that there are different learned strategies for task-directed vision. Among such strategies are different mutual interactions between foveal and peripheral vision. (N Engl J Med 1987; 316: 1238–43.)