Search

Background: Visual-spatial attention is associated with reading development, but we do not know whether this is primarily driven by the deployment of goal-directed or stimulus-driven attention. Method: One hundred ninety-four Chinese-speaking first graders completed two visual search tasks, in which they searched for a target among a number of distractor items. In the feature search task, the orientation of the target was different from that of the distractors (i.e., a horizontal line amid vertical lines), whereas in the conjunction search, the target was defined by a combination of orientation and colour (i.e., a red horizontal line among red vertical lines and green horizontal lines). They then completed two reading tasks in addition to morphological awareness, rapid naming, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and verbal working memory tasks. Results: Accuracy in the conjunction, but not feature, search was positively correlated with Chinese character recognition and reading fluency. Moreover, conjunction search accuracy explained unique variance in character recognition accuracy after controlling for morphological awareness, rapid naming, and vocabulary, as well as age, nonverbal intelligence, and verbal working memory. Additionally, children with good reading skills tended to show smaller decreases in search accuracy with larger set sizes than those with poor reading skills. Conclusions: The data suggest that reading is associated with goal-directed but not stimulus-driven visual--spatial attention. This non-linguistic ability appears to contribute to reading beyond established reading-related linguistic skills.

Background: Physically manipulating objects according to texts can improve reading performance. This study examined whether these benefits can also be achieved via observing these manipulations or whether, because of an additional involvement of an action system, the physical manipulation might induce larger effects. Methods: In total, 134 second graders and 140 fourth graders completed tasks measuring reading comprehension, nonverbal intelligence, rapid automatised naming, working memory, morphological awareness and phonological awareness. Each child was assigned to one of three groups: rereading, observed manipulation and participant-performed manipulation. Those in the observed manipulation group were asked to reread the story while simultaneously watching a video of corresponding manipulations. Those in the participant-performed manipulation group were instructed to manipulate objects to represent the story's content. The next period was concerned with the practice effects of the manipulations. The children in the observed manipulation group were instructed to read a new story using the participant-performed manipulation approach. Those in the other two groups were asked to read the new story using the same strategies they had used in the former period. Results: The results for the acute improvement showed that, for the fourth graders, the participant-performed manipulation led to a greater improvement than the observed one, and both of the manipulations provided greater improvements than the rereading. Our examination of the practice effect indicated that the participant-performed manipulation group only had an advantage over the rereading group, not the observed manipulation group, in text comprehension as a result of experience with object manipulation. Conclusions: The current results suggest that the observed and physical manipulations make unique contributions to reading comprehension. In addition, these two manipulations lead to similar facilitating effects of subsequent object manipulation on text comprehension.