Impaired ability in visual-spatial attention in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

Many studies demonstrated that alphabetic language speaking children with developmental dyslexia had a deficit in visual-spatial attention, especially in rapid orienting of the attentional spotlight. Chinese, as a logographic language, is characterized as highly visual-spatial complexity. To date, few studies explored the visual-spatial attention of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia. The present study examined the visual-spatial attention of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia using the visual search task. The results showed that Chinese children with developmental dyslexia had poor performances in conjunction search, indicating that they had a deficit in the rapid orienting of visual-spatial attention. Meanwhile, only the conjunction search was a significant predictor of Chinese characters reading when other variables were controlled. These results indicated that Chinese dyslexic children had a deficit in visual-spatial attention, and visual-spatial attention played a special role in Chinese reading development.

Perceptual Load and Sex-Specific Personality Traits

The impact of sex-specific personality traits has often been investigated for visuospatial tasks such as mental rotation, but less is known about the influence of personality traits on visual search. We investigated whether the Big Five personality traits Extroversion (E), Openness (O), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Neuroticism (N) and the Autism Quotient (AQ) influence visual search in a sample of N = 65 men and women. In three experiments, we varied stimulus complexity and predictability. As expected, latencies were longer when the target was absent. Pop-out search was faster than conjunction search. A large number of distracters slowed down reaction times (RTs). When stimulus complexity was not predictable in Experiment 3, this reduced search accuracy by about half. As could be predicted based on previous research on long RT tails, conjunction search in target absent trials revealed the impact of personality traits. The RT effect in visual search of the accelerating “less social” AQ score was specific to men, while the effects of the “more social” decelerating Big Five Inventory factors agreeableness and conscientiousness were specific to women. Thus, sex-specific personality traits could explain decision-making thresholds, while visual stimulus complexity yielded an impact of the classic personality traits neuroticism and extroversion.

Reading problems and their connection with visual search and attention: The search for a cause continues

Attention has been hypothesized to act as a sequential gating mechanism for the orderly processing of letters in words. These same visuo-attentional processes are assumed to partake in some but not all visual search tasks. In the current study, 60 adults with varying degrees of reading abilities, ranging from expert readers to severely impaired dyslexic readers, completed an attentionally demanding visual conjunction search task thought to heavily rely on the dorsal visual stream. A visual feature search task served as an internal control. According to the dorsal view of dyslexia, reading problems should go hand in hand with specific problems in visual conjunction search – particularly elevated conjunction search slopes (time per search item) – which would be interpreted as a problem with visual attention. Results showed that reading problems were associated with slower visual search, especially conjunction search. However, problems with reading were not associated with increased conjunction search slopes but instead with increased conjunction search intercepts, traditionally not interpreted as reflecting attentional processes. Our data are hard to reconcile with hypothesized problems in dyslexia with the serial moving of an attentional spotlight across a visual scene or a page of text.

Where's the wine? Heavy social drinkers show attentional bias towards alcohol in a visual search conjunction task

Background and Aims: Research indicates that high consumers of alcohol exhibit attentional bias (AB) towards alcohol-related cues, suggestive of a cognitive mechanism that might drive substance seeking. Many tasks that measure AB (e.g., visual probe, addiction Stroop), however, are limited by their reliance on non-appetitive control cues, the serial presentation of stimuli, and their poor internal reliability. The current study employed a visual conjunction search (VCS) task capable of presenting multiple alcoholic and non-alcoholic appetitive cues simultaneously to assess whether social drinkers attend selectively to alcoholic stimuli. To assess the construct validity of this task, we examined whether alcohol consumption and related problems, subjective craving, and drinking motives predict alcohol-specific AB. Design & Setting: A VCS task was performed in a laboratory setting, which required participants to detect the presence of appetitive alcoholic (wine, beer) and non-alcoholic (cola, lemonade) targets within arrays of matching and non-matching distractors. Participants: Data from 99 participants were assessed (MAge = 20.77, SD = 2.98; 64 [65%] females), with 81.8% meeting the threshold for harmful alcohol consumption (MAUDIT = 12.89, SD = 5.79). Measurements: Self-reports of alcohol consumption and related problems (AUDIT), subjective craving (Alcohol Craving Questionnaire Short Form) and drinking motives (Drinking Motives Questionnaire Short Form) were obtained, and the VCS task measured response times for the correct detection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic targets. Findings: Participants were significantly quicker to detect alcoholic relative to non-alcoholic appetitive targets (p < .001, dz = .41), which was predicted positively by AUDIT scores (p = .013, R2 = .06%). The VCS task achieved excellent reliability (α > .79), superior to other paradigms. Conclusions: The Visual Conjunction Search task presents as a highly reliable method for assessing alcohol-related attentional bias, and shows that heavy social drinkers prioritise alcoholic cues in their immediate environment.

Faces and words are both associated and dissociated: Evidence from visual problems in dyslexia

Faces and words are traditionally assumed to be independently processed. Dyslexia is also traditionally thought to be a non-visual deficit. Counter to both ideas, face perception deficits in dyslexia have been reported. Others report no such deficits. We sought to resolve this discrepancy.60 adults participated in the study (24 dyslexic and 36 typical readers). Feature-based processing and configural or global form processing of faces was measured with a face matching task. Participants additionally performed visual conjunction search, thought to be attentionally demanding, and visual feature search. Dyslexic readers tended to be poorer than typical readers at feature-based face matching while no differences were found for global form face matching. Opposite laterality effects in these tasks, dependent on left-right orientation of faces, further supported that they tapped into different mechanisms. Reading problems were also associated with slower search, especially conjunction search, but search difficulties could not account for face matching problems.We conclude that word and face perception are associated when the latter requires the processing of visual features of a face, while processing the global form of faces apparently shares minimal – if any – resources with visual word processing. The current results indicate that visual word and face processing are both associated and dissociated – but this depends on what visual mechanisms are task-relevant. We suggest that reading deficits could stem from multiple factors, and that one such factor is a specific problem with feature-based processing of visual objects.