Comparing the Ability of Perceptual Simulation in Children with Developmental Dyslexia and Typical Children: An Embodied Cognition View

One controversial issue in embodied cognition is that lower cognitive abilities (e.g. perception) influence higher cognitive abilities (e.g. language). In particular, with regard to this idea, several studies have shown that visual perception and visual imagery share common neural representations. However, it is an open question whether visual perception deficit could influence perceptual simulation during language comprehension. To clarify this issue we carried out a behavioral experiment, using sentence-picture verification task to examine the extent to which children with developmental dyslexia can simulate the shape and orientation of an object implicitly described in the sentence. Seventeen children aged between 8 and 13 years with dyslexia and 17 age-matched control subjects participated in this study. Data analyses showed a significant difference between two groups and revealed that in the typically developed group reaction time for matching condition was faster than mismatching condition, whereas children with dyslexia were less able to distinguish between two conditions. The results showed that perceptual experiences can modify the subsequent processing of perceptual (visual) imagery and also suggest that visual perception and visualization during language processing share common representations. In addition, the finding highlights the influence of visual perception on language comprehension.