Elsevier

Cortex

Volume 34, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 531-546
Cortex

Visual Selective Attention and Reading Efficiency are Related in Children

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70512-4Get rights and content

Abstract

We investigated the relationship between visual selective attention and linguistic performance. Subjects were classified in four categories according to their accuracy in a letter cancellation task involving selective attention. The task consisted in searching a target letter in a set of background letters and accuracy was measured as a function of set size. We found that children with the lowest performance in the cancellation task present a significantly slower reading rate and a higher number of reading visual errors than children with highest performance. Results also show that these groups of searchers present significant differences in a lexical search task whereas their performance did not differ in lexical decision and syllables control task.

The relationship between letter search and reading, as well as the finding that poor readers-searchers perform poorly lexical search tasks also involving selective attention, suggest that the relationship between letter search and reading difficulty may reflect a deficit in a visual selective attention mechanisms which is involved in all these tasks.

A deficit in visual attention can be linked to the problems that disabled readers present in the function of magnocellular stream which culminates in posterior parietal cortex, an area which plays an important role in guiding visual attention.

References (38)

  • J. Brannan et al.

    Allocation of visual attention in good and poor readers

    Perception and Psychophysics

    (1987)
  • C. Casco

    Visual processing of static and dynamic information in disabled readers

    Clinical Vision Science

    (1993)
  • C. Casco et al.

    Visual search in good and poor readers: Effect with single and combined features targets

    Perceptual and Motor Skills

    (1996)
  • C. Cornoldi et al.

    La Verifica Oggettiva della Lettura (Objective Reading Assessment)

    (1981)
  • L. Diller et al.

    Studies in Cognition and Rehabilitation

    (1974)
  • G.F. Eden et al.

    Abnormal processing of visual motion in dyslexia revealed by functional brain imaging

    Nature

    (1996)
  • M.C. Flom et al.

    Contour interaction and visual resolution: Controlateral effect

    Science

    (1963)
  • C. Hulme

    The implausibility of low-level visual deficits as a cause of children's reading difficulty

    Cognitive Neuropsychology

    (1988)
  • P. Jorm

    The Psychology or Reading and Spelling Disabilities

    (1983)
  • Cited by (123)

    • Feasibility of a school-based mindfulness program for improving inhibitory skills in children with autism spectrum disorder

      2020, Research in Developmental Disabilities
      Citation Excerpt :

      The Stroop task and the W/DW test have previously been used to detect changes in inhibitory skills following intervention, including mindfulness-based interventions (Napoli, Krech, & Holley, 2005; Wenk-Sormaz, 2005). Cancellation tasks serve as a measure of selective visual attention (Casco, Tressoldi, & Dellantonio, 1998). In order to perform well on these tasks, an individual must quickly search for and mark a target object while suppressing this action for distractor or background stimuli (Pradhan & Nagendra, 2008).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text