Franceschini-Bertoni-2022

Authors: Sandro Franceschini, Sara Bertoni, Giovanna Puccio, Simone Gori, Cristiano Termine & Andrea Facoetti.

Article: Visuo-spatial attention deficit in children with reading difficulties.

Publication: Scientific Reports (Nature.com). 12, Article number: 13930 2022 | DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-16646-w

[Full Text] [PubMed]

Abstract

Although developmental reading disorders (developmental dyslexia) have been mainly associated with auditory-phonological deficits, recent longitudinal and training studies have shown a possible causal role of visuo-attentional skills in reading acquisition. Indeed, visuo-attentional mechanisms could be involved in the orthographic processing of the letter string and the graphemic parsing that precede the grapheme-to-phoneme mapping. Here, we used a simple paper-and-pencil task composed of three labyrinths to measure visuo-spatial attention in a large sample of primary school children (n = 398). In comparison to visual search tasks requiring visual working memory, our labyrinth task mainly measures distributed and focused visuo-spatial attention, also controlling for sensorimotor learning. Compared to typical readers (n = 340), children with reading difficulties (n = 58) showed clear visuo-spatial attention impairments that appear not linked to motor coordination and procedural learning skills implicated in this paper and pencil task. Since visual attention is dysfunctional in about 40% of the children with reading difficulties, an efficient reading remediation program should integrate both auditory-phonological and visuo-attentional interventions.

Tagged as: children, vision training, and visual attention

Citation:

Franceschini, S., Bertoni, S., Puccio, G. et al. Visuo-spatial attention deficit in children with reading difficulties. Sci Rep 12, 13930 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16646-w

Leave a public question or comment:

If you need personal help or assistance please use our contact forms instead.


All comments are moderated. Comments that are not relevant to the page topic or which contain identifiable personal information will be removed.


Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *