Both social and engineering factors must be further explored and scrutinized across the globe—as should notions of justice related to flooding impacts and responses.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com/Ekaterina Pokrovsky.
New Research In
Physical Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Biological Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Edited by Michael Posner, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, and approved April 23, 2012 (received for review April 4, 2012)
Abstract
Although the causes of dyslexia are still debated, all researchers agree that the main challenge is to find ways that allow a child with dyslexia to read more words in less time, because reading more is undisputedly the most efficient intervention for dyslexia. Sophisticated training programs exist, but they typically target the component skills of reading, such as phonological awareness. After the component skills have improved, the main challenge remains (that is, reading deficits must be treated by reading more—a vicious circle for a dyslexic child). Here, we show that a simple manipulation of letter spacing substantially improved text reading performance on the fly (without any training) in a large, unselected sample of Italian and French dyslexic children. Extra-large letter spacing helps reading, because dyslexics are abnormally affected by crowding, a perceptual phenomenon with detrimental effects on letter recognition that is modulated by the spacing between letters. Extra-large letter spacing may help to break the vicious circle by rendering the reading material more easily accessible.
Footnotes
↵1M.Z., C.B., and A.F. contributed equally to this work.
- ↵2To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: marco.zorzi{at}unipd.it.
Author contributions: M.Z., C.B., A.F., and I.L. designed research; C.B., M.C., M.M., L.B., F.G., and C.P.-G. performed research; M.Z., C.B., A.F., and J.C.Z. analyzed data; and M.Z. and J.C.Z. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
See Commentary on page 11064
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1205566109/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Wider letter spacing helps dyslexic readers
More Articles of This Classification
Biological Sciences
Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
Related Content
Cited by...
- How the visual aspects can be crucial in reading acquisition: The intriguing case of crowding and developmental dyslexia
- Modelling reading development through phonological decoding and self-teaching: implications for dyslexia
- Reply to Skottun and Skoyles: Statistical and practical significance of extra-wide letter spacing for dyslexic children
- Interletter spacing and dyslexia
- Helping dyslexic children attend to letters within visual word forms
Similar Articles
You May Also be Interested in
Blair Hedges discusses the state of Haiti's remaining forests and the consequences to biodiversity.
A study uncovers genetic evidence of early colonization of Jamaica by primates and suggests that adaptation can shape species morphology in novel environments, even when species come from morphologically conservative families.
Image courtesy of Lorraine Meeker (American Museum of Natural History, New York).
Researchers report that some moth species use sound absorbing-scales to avoid detection by bats and suggest that the findings could aid the design of biologically inspired sound absorbers for an array of applications, including noise mitigation and building acoustics.
Image courtesy of Thomas R. Neil.
Using phylogenetic analysis, researchers report that ants used plants for food and nesting long before plants evolved structures to accommodate arthropods, and although interactions with ants likely facilitated plant diversification, plant interactions did not shape ant diversification.
Image courtesy of Pixabay/cmolens.
