Visual search organization in a cancellation task in developmental dyslexia

ABSTRACT

There is converging evidence that performance on visual search tasks, often assessed with cancellation tasks, is associated with performance on reading tasks. However, results have been inconsistent across studies dealing with developmental dyslexia. One limitation of previous research is that accuracy, rather than search strategies, was assessed. The present study is the first to investigate visual search strategies during a cancellation task in developmental dyslexia. Here, 24 dyslexic and 33 non-dyslexic children were included. Difficulties in visual search accuracy and organization were highlighted in the dyslexic group compared to the non-dyslexic group. Visual search patterns were also different if dyslexic children had more difficulties in the lexical or the sublexical reading route. While several questions remain to be addressed regarding the influence of other visual attentional processes on the relationship between visual search and reading, this study supports the use of visual search tasks in dyslexia assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• developmental dyslexia
• visual attention
• visual search
• search organization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants followed the ethical standards of the institutional and/ or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The ethical committee of Paris Cité University approved this study.

Data availability statement

Data are available on the following link: https://osf.io/ga8cd/