Increased susceptibility to proactive interference in adults with dyslexia
Recent findings show that people with dyslexia have an impairment in serial-order memory. Based on these findings, the present study aimed to test the hypothesis that people with dyslexia have difficulties dealing with proactive interference in recognition memory. A group of 25 adults with dyslexia and a group of matched controls were subjected to a 2-back recognition task, which required participants to indicate whether an item (mis)matched the item that had been presented 2 trials before. Proactive interference was elicited using lure trials in which the item matched the item in the 3-back position instead of the targeted 2-back position. Our results demonstrate that the introduction of lure trials affected 2-back recognition performance more severely in the dyslexic group than in the control group, suggesting greater difficulty in resisting proactive interference in dyslexia.
This paper was authored by Louisa Bogaerts Arnaud Szmalec, Wibke Hachmann, Mike Page, Evy Woumans and Wouter Duyck. A copy of this paper can be downloaded here.