Most studies today agree about the link between visual-attention and oculomotor control during reading: attention seems to affect saccadic programming, that is, the position where the eyes land in a word. Moreover, recent studies show that visuo-attentional processes are strictly linked to normal and impaired reading. In particular, a large body…

Earlier research showed that visuospatial working memory (VSWM) is better preserved in Down syndrome (DS) than verbal WM. Some differences emerged, however, when VSWM performance was broken down into its various components, and more recent studies revealed that the spatial-simultaneous component of VSWM is more impaired than the spatial-sequential…

Previous studies have shown that deficiencies in visuospatial perception and semantic processing in people with Williams syndrome (WS) are due to deficient central cohesiveness. Unlike previous studies that used abstract stimuli, this study used pictures to determine the relative ability of people with WS to integrate contextual information with…

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have deficits in working memory, but little is known about the everyday memory of these children in real-life situations. We investigated the everyday memory function in children with DCD, and explored the specific profile of everyday memory across different domains. Nineteen children with…

Difficulty with literacy acquisition is only one of the symptoms of developmental dyslexia. Dyslexic children also show poor motor coordination and postural control. Those problems could be associated with automaticity, i.e., difficulty in performing a task without dispending a fair amount of conscious efforts. If this is the case, dyslexic…

This study evaluates how much the effects of intervention programs are influenced by pre-existing psychological adjustment and self-esteem levels in kindergarten and first grade children with poor visual-motor integration skills, from low socioeconomic backgrounds. One hundred and sixteen mainstream kindergarten and first-grade children, from low…

This paper aims to investigate whether--and how--consonant sonority (obstruent vs. sonorant) and status (coda vs. onset) within syllable boundaries modulate the syllable-based segmentation strategies. Here, it is questioned whether French dyslexic children, who experience acoustic-phonetic (i.e., voicing) and phonological impairments, are…

We sought to determine the effects of varying the perceptual demands of a suprapostural visual task on the postural activity of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), and typically developing children (TDC). Sixty-four (32 per group) children aged between 9 and 10 years participated. In a within-participants design, each child…

Using head-mounted eye tracker material, we assessed spatial recognition abilities (e.g., reaction to object permutation, removal or replacement with a new object) in participants with intellectual disabilities. The "Intellectual Disabilities (ID)" group (n = 40) obtained a score totalling a 93.7% success rate, whereas the "Normal Control" group…

A previous study found a visual deficit in contour integration in English readers with dyslexia (Simmers & Bex, 2001). Visual contour integration may play an even more significant role in Chinese handwriting particularly due to its logographic presentation (Lam, Au, Leung, & Li-Tsang, 2011). The current study examined the relationship…

This study was designed to examine the cultural sensitivity of the PDMS-2 for Portuguese preschool children aged 36-71 months. A total of 540 children (255 males and 285 females) from 15 public preschools of Viana do Castelo, Portugal, were assessed. Age and gender effects in motor performance were examined. Results indicated that PDMS-2 is valid…

As pedestrians, the perceptual ability to accurately judge the relative rate of approaching vehicles and select a suitable crossing gap requires sensitivity to looming. It also requires that crossing judgments are synchronized with motoric capabilities. Previous research has suggested that children with Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD)…

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) show deficits in the covert orienting of visuospatial attention, suggesting an underlying issue in attentional disengagement and/or inhibitory control. However, an important theoretical issue that remains unclear is whether the pattern of deficits varies with DCD severity. Fifty-one children…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between intelligence and visual motor integration skills in 5-year-old children with 22q11-deletion syndrome (22q11DS) (N = 65, 43 females, 22 males; mean age 5.6 years (SD 0.2), range 5.23-5.99 years). Sufficient VMI skills seem a prerequisite for IQ testing. Since problems related to…

A range of neurobehavioral impairments, including impaired visual perception and visual-motor integration, are found in very preterm born children, but reported findings show great variability. We aimed to aggregate the existing literature using meta-analysis, in order to provide robust estimates of the effect of very preterm birth on visual…