What Is Going on with Visual Attention in Reading and Dyslexia? A Critical Review of Recent Studies

Abstract

This critical review examined current issues to do with the role of visual attention in reading. To do this, we searched for and reviewed 18 recent articles, including all that were found after 2019 and used a Latin alphabet. Inspection of these articles showed that the Visual Attention Span task was run a number of times in well-controlled studies and was typically a small but significant predictor of reading ability, even after potential covariation with phonological effects were accounted for. A number of other types of tasks were used to examine different aspects of visual attention, with differences between dyslexic readers and controls typically found. However, most of these studies did not adequately control for phonological effects, and of those that did, only very weak and non-significant results were found. Furthermore, in the smaller studies, separate within-group correlations between the tasks and reading performance were generally not provided, making causal effects of the manipulations difficult to ascertain. Overall, it seems reasonable to suggest that understanding how and why different types of visual tasks affect particular aspects of reading performance is an important area for future research.

Predicting word and pseudoword reading in Arabic‐speaking children: the independent contributions of phonological and morphological awareness and visual attention

“…The authors reported that performance on visual‐spatial, visual search, and attentional blink paradigms showed weak relations to reading. As stated by Perry and Long (2022), even tasks like visual search are well‐established in terms of what they measure given their widespread usage; they were considered as weak predictors of reading achievement.…”

“…This study was conducted on an adult sample, and one might suspect that individuals who continue to have dyslexia as they age would develop adaptive strategies, distinguishing them from those who have dyslexia as young children (Perry & Long, 2022). In this case, older individuals with dyslexia are likely to have some form of remediation, while still having reading difficulties (Perry & Long, 2022). More recently, Lallier et al (2018) studied the association between the VA span and reading in Arabic, where the use of specific reading strategies depends on the amount of diacritics in words: reading vowelised and non-vowelised Arabic scripts favours sublexical and lexical strategies, respectively.…”

“…Visual attention (VA) is an important part of reading and deficits related to it have been commonly implicated in dyslexia (see Perry & Long, 2022, for a review). It is well documented that children with dyslexia have VA deficits (Casco & Prunetti, 1996; Stein & Walsh, 1997; Vidyasagar & Pammer, 2010), and slower engagement of VA compared to chronological age and IQ‐controls (Facoetti et al, 2008).…”

“…The overall findings suggest that the size of the VA span, the shape of the VA span response patterns and the relationship between VA span and reading are modulated by language‐specific features. This study was conducted on an adult sample, and one might suspect that individuals who continue to have dyslexia as they age would develop adaptive strategies, distinguishing them from those who have dyslexia as young children (Perry & Long, 2022). In this case, older individuals with dyslexia are likely to have some form of remediation, while still having reading difficulties (Perry & Long, 2022).…”

Visual attention span as a predictor of reading fluency and reading comprehension in Arabic

“…There is growing evidence that phonological awareness (PA) and visual attention span (VAS) independently contribute to explain inter-individual variations in reading outcomes ( Valdois et al, 2019a ; Perry and Long, 2022 ). PA reflects the capacity to identify and manipulate phonological units (like phonemes, rimes, or syllables) within spoken words.…”