Impact of Motor Tasks and Lidocaine on Reading Unfamiliar Words in Adults With and Without Dyslexia

• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Trial end date: 2025-04-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

Recent claims report that reading ability is partially dependent on speech production. While the evidence for this claim is compelling, it is not known to what extent, the speech production system contributes to successful reading performance in adult populations with dyslexia. One direct way to determine the influence of speech production feedback on reading performance is to measure reading performance in adults with dyslexia with an added motor component (i.e., sucking on a lollipop, holding a bite bar or numbing their oral mucosa with lidocaine).

To adults with and without dyslexia 18 years of age and older (60 in total; 30 in each group), three experimental tasks will be administered under four conditions (no motor task, lollipop, bite bar and lidocaine). The first task asks whether the letter string being presented is a word or a nonword. Secondly, a motor sequencing task will be administered where adults will be asked to label pictures. For all tasks, the accuracy and speed of responses will be measured by a computer while participants wear a fNIRS cap.

• Phase: Phase 4
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: University of Alberta
• Treatments: Lidocaine

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• All participants will be healthy and need to be proficient in English as the assessment materials are only available in English.

• Adult participants must weigh at least 50 kg or 110 lbs to avoid any possible toxic effects from the lidocaine.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Participants must have no personal or family history of adverse reactions to anesthetics to complete all the conditions.

• Participants who cannot consume sugary products will also be excluded.

• Additional exclusion criteria include: severe kidney disease; severe liver disease; treatment with class I antiarrhythmic drugs (such as mexiletine) or class III antiarrhythmic drugs (such as amiodarone)

• lack of integrity of oral mucosa]

• allergy to non-medicinal ingredients and preservatives (and related compounds) of Lidocaine Viscous, such as methylparaben, propylparaben, paraaminobenzoic acid, saccharin, artificial colours and flavour

• concomitant use of another anaesthetic containing lidocaine or another amide

• participant being pregnant or suspecting that she might be pregnant