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Visual-spatial-motor integration in a cross-section of primary-aged children: implications for assessing risk of Dyslexia

Piotrowska, Barbara; Willis, Alexandra; MacLean, Rory; Murray, Jennifer; Kerridge, Jon

Authors

Alexandra Willis

Jon Kerridge



Abstract

Dyslexia is a common condition characterized by difficulties with reading and writing despite adequate intelligence, education and motivation. Many individuals with dyslexia also have problems integrating visual information over space and time, and /or motor control: however, whether sensory and motor deficits underlie phonological difficulties in dyslexia, or merely co-exist with them, remains a topic of debate. We used a novel, computer-based “dot-to-dot” (DtD) task to explore visual-motor integration in 253 children (aged 4 – 10 yrs, m=5.69; 114 females) from three primary schools in Edinburgh, UK, and its relationship with phonological and cognitive skills known to be compromised in dyslexia. We found that: (1) DtD accuracy was significantly correlated with phonological processing, rapid automatized naming (RAN) and digit span (arguably the best predictors of dyslexia); (2) DtD accuracy was a predictive variable of phonological processing adding14% of the variance to the model, (3) children deemed at “high” risk of dyslexia according to existing screening tools (e.g. LUCID-Rapid) performed significantly less accurately than those deemed at “low” risk. Follow-up testing of the youngest, pre-reading children will indicate whether or not poor visual-motor integration performance predicts later reading problems.

Citation

Piotrowska, B., Willis, A., MacLean, R., Murray, J., & Kerridge, J. (2015, August). Visual-spatial-motor integration in a cross-section of primary-aged children: implications for assessing risk of Dyslexia. Presented at European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) 2015

Presentation Conference Type Conference Paper (Published)
Conference Name European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP) 2015
Start Date Aug 22, 2015
End Date Aug 27, 2015
Publication Date 2015
Deposit Date Mar 3, 2016
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Book Title Proceedings European Conference on Visual Perception ECVP 2015
Keywords Dyslexia; visual information; visual-motor integration; reading problems;
Public URL http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/9479






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