Influence of the visual attention span on child reading performance: a cross‐sectional study

TLDR

The visual attention span deficit hypothesis explains variability in developmental dyslexia. The study examined how visual attention span influences reading development in 417 typically developing children across first, third, and fifth grades. Researchers administered a battery of reading, phoneme awareness, and visual attention span tasks to assess their relationships. Results show that visual attention span predicts reading skill variation independently of phoneme awareness, with a declining effect on pseudoword reading from first to third grade but a sustained influence on irregular word reading, indicating a long‑term impact on orthographic knowledge acquisition.

Abstract

The visual attention (VA) span deficit hypothesis was found successfully to account for variability in developmental dyslexia (Bosse, Tainturier & Valdois, 2007). We conducted a cross‐sectional study on 417 typically developing children from first, third and fifth grades examining the role of VA span on the development of reading skills. A battery including reading, phoneme awareness and VA span tasks was administered. Results show that VA span predicts variations in learning to read independent of the influence of phoneme awareness. Moreover, whereas the specific influence of VA span on pseudoword reading declines from first to third grade, VA span has a significant and sustained influence across grades for the irregular words. In addition to phoneme awareness, the VA span contributes to reading performance from the beginning of literacy instruction, suggesting that it might have a long‐term influence on specific orthographic knowledge acquisition.