Introduction: Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disorders, frequently associated with deficits in attention, perception, and phonological processing. This study aimed to investigate attention and perception impairments in children with dyslexia compared to their healthy peers.
Methods: A total of 40 children—20 with dyslexia and 20 typically developing controls—were recruited via convenience sampling from local schools and a neurodevelopmental disorders center in Tehran, Iran, between March and November 2024. Four cognitive tasks — Oddball, Attentional Blink, Posner Cueing, and Similarity/Difference — were administered through a comprehensive web-based application. Each task was presented under both linguistic and nonlinguistic conditions, in both visual and auditory modalities, and performance was assessed through accuracy scores and reaction times.
Results: Statistical analyses using ANOVA and independent t-tests revealed that children with dyslexia performed significantly worse in linguistic and auditory conditions than their typically developing counterparts (P<0.01). Notably, reaction times were also longer for the dyslexic group in specific language-based tasks. These findings indicate that the presence of linguistic content, particularly in the auditory domain, poses greater challenges for children with dyslexia.
Conclusion: Overall, the results highlight the importance of comprehensive, multi-modal assessment tools for identifying cognitive deficits in children with dyslexia. Targeted interventions that integrate visual and auditory elements could be particularly advantageous for enhancing reading and associated skills within thispopulation.