Video Gaming May Help Dyslexics

People with dyslexia may have trouble with more than just reading, a new study claims. Association between sound and visual stimuli may be what's behind their learning difficulties in the first place, and researchers propose video games can help.

The study, published in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, set out to display differences in the way dyslexics process low-level visual and auditory stimuli, compared to non-dyslexics. Evidence of this would show that there is a link between auditory sense confusion and the well known literary impairment, dyslexia.

During the study, researchers asked participants to push a button as soon as they could heard a sound, saw a tiny flash, or experienced both simultaneously. The speed with which they pressed the button was recorded and then analyzed.

Researchers found that dyslexics and non-dyslexics fared equally well when a sound (alone or with a flash) followed a sound or when a flash (alone or with a sound) followed a flash. However, when a sound alone followed a flash alone, participants with dyslexia  reacted significantly slower.

This showed that dyslexics have a hard time shifting attention from visual to auditory. According to the researchers, such difficulty could explain why dyslexic children have such a hard time learning their letters in the first place, as the traditional way to teach the alphabet is to show the letter and then associate it with a sound.

For dyslexics, the researchers wrote, letters might be better learned the other way around, introducing the sound first, and then showing the letter.

Interestingly, the study's researchers concluded their work with an unusual recommendation. Action videogames, they said, which have been shown to improve multitasking abilities, might be an ideal therapy for dyslexics. The fast moving visual stimuli associated with ever shifting sounds of modern video games could serve as a focus-shifting training regiment to help dyslexics get by in a visual-to-sound world.

The study was published in Current Biology on February 13.