Visual motion and decision-making in dyslexia: Reduced accumulation of sensory evidence and related neural dynamics.

Children with and without dyslexia differ in their behavioural responses to visual information, particularly when required to pool dynamic signals over space and time. Importantly, multiple processes contribute to behavioural responses. Here we investigated which processing stages are affected in children with dyslexia when performing visual motion processing tasks, by combining two methods that are sensitive to the dynamic processes leading to responses. We used a diffusion model which decomposes response time and accuracy into distinct cognitive constructs, and high-density EEG. 50 children with dyslexia (24 male) and 50 typically developing children (28 male) aged 6 to 14 years judged the direction of motion as quickly and accurately as possible in two global motion tasks (motion coherence and direction integration), which varied in their requirements for noise exclusion. Following our pre-registered analyses, we fitted hierarchical Bayesian diffusion models to the data, blinded to group membership. Unblinding revealed reduced evidence accumulation in children with dyslexia compared to typical children for both tasks. Additionally, we identified a response-locked EEG component which was maximal over centro-parietal electrodes which indicated a neural correlate of reduced drift-rate in dyslexia in the motion coherence task, thereby linking brain and behaviour. We suggest that children with dyslexia tend to be slower to extract sensory evidence from global motion displays, regardless of whether noise exclusion is required, thus furthering our understanding of atypical perceptual decision-making processes in dyslexia.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENTReduced sensitivity to visual information has been reported in dyslexia, with a lively debate about whether these differences causally contribute to reading difficulties. In this large pre-registered study with a blind modelling approach, we combine state-of-the art methods in both computational modelling and EEG analysis to pinpoint the stages of processing that are atypical in children with dyslexia in two visual motion tasks that vary in their requirement for noise exclusion. We find reduced evidence accumulation in children with dyslexia across both tasks, and identify a neural marker, allowing us to link brain and behaviour. We show that children with dyslexia exhibit general difficulties with extracting sensory evidence from global motion displays, not just in tasks that require noise exclusion.