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International audience; Reading is essential for learning, from literature to physics, from paper to screens on e-readers and smart phones. Even if it is well known that learning to read implies good language skills, children also need to develop good oculomotor and visual-perception skills. Thereby, any deficits in visual processing may affect learning. The possible impact of visual deficits is rarely considered, especially with regard to eye movements and visual perception. Hence, these deficits are usually discovered much later or remain undiagnosed. The present study aimed at assessing the usefulness of visual processing related measures in the early detection of reading difficulties. Visual skill differences that are apparent early in kindergarten might provide predictive insights into risk for learning difficulties at school entry. We used a prospective, longitudinal approach where visual processes (assessed with the Developmental Eye Movement (DEM) test) were measured in 51 preschoolers, and the impact of these processes on future reading development was explored one year later, in Grade 1. Results showed that (1) 31% of our sample of preschoolers showed visual processing impairments (without any clinical complaints) and (2) reading accuracy and speed in first graders were significantly correlated with visual skills assessed in kindergarten, thus confirming the significant role of oculomotor and visual-perception processes in the acquisition of reading skills. These suggests the potential for these measures to be used clinically for identifying children at risk for low academic achievement, enabling appropriate targeting of early interventions.

Studies have suggested a dysfunction in oculomotor skills in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). It has been proposed that the Developmental Eye Movement (DEM) test is useful in testing the dyslexics’ (DD) oculomotor behavior during reading, in a simple and indirect manner. The present study aimed at exploring the oculomotor behavior in children with DCD as assessed with the DEM test. Furthermore, we compared children with DCD to children with DD and to children with both DCD and DD in order to investigate the specificity of the oculomotor difficulties, as measured by the DEM test. Results showed that 1) children with DCD presented mild atypical performances at the DEM test (error z-score only), 2) children with DD presented particularly poor performance on the DEM test, and 3) the co-morbid condition (DCD+DD) did not add to the severity of atypical performance obtained on the DEM test. In sum, children with DCD were the less affected according to the DEM test, and children with DD (isolated or comorbid) presented the most atypical performance. Results at the DEM test did not allow making emerge clear oculomotor atypicalities in DCD. We thus conclude that more research using eye-tracking techniques is needed to explore the nature of oculomotor atypicalities in DCD children, to distinguish DD and DCD oculomotor behavior, and to understand the profile of children with dual diagnosis.

International audience

International audience; The present study investigated the impact of inter-character spacing on saccade programming in beginning readers and dyslexic children. In two experiments, eye movements were recorded while dyslexic children, reading-age, and chronological-age controls, performed an oculomotor lateralized bisection task on words and strings of hashes presented either with default inter-character spacing or with extra spacing between the characters. The results of Experiment 1 showed that (1) only proficient readers had already developed highly automatized procedures for programming both left- and rightward saccades, depending on the discreteness of the stimuli and (2) children of all groups were disrupted (i.e., had trouble to land close to the beginning of the stimuli) by extra spacing between the characters of the stimuli, and particularly for stimuli presented in the left visual field. Experiment 2 was designed to disentangle the role of inter-character spacing and spatial width. Stimuli were made the same physical length in the default and extra-spacing conditions by having more characters in the default spacing condition. Our results showed that inter-letter spacing still influenced saccade programming when controlling for spatial width, thus confirming the detrimental effect of extra spacing for saccade programming. We conclude that the beneficial effect of increased inter-letter spacing on reading can be better explained in terms of decreased visual crowding than improved saccade targeting.

International audience

International audience

RIPSYDEVE = Réseau Interuniversitaire de Psychologie du Développement et de l’Éducation; International audience

International audience; Reading is known to be primarily a linguistic task. However, to successfully decode written words, children also need to develop good visual-perception skills. Furthermore, motor skills are implicated in letter recognition and reading acquisition. Three studies have been designed to determine the link between reading, visual perception, and visual–motor integration using the Developmental Test of Visual Perception version 2 (DTVP-2). Study 1 tests how visual perception and visual–motor integration in kindergarten predict reading outcomes in Grade 1, in typical developing children. Study 2 is aimed at finding out if these skills can be seen as clinical markers in dyslexic children (DD). Study 3 determines if visual–motor integration and motor-reduced visual perception can distinguish DD children according to whether they exhibit or not developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Results showed that phonological awareness and visual–motor integration predicted reading outcomes one year later. DTVP-2 demonstrated similarities and differences in visual–motor integration and motor-reduced visual perception between children with DD, DCD, and both of these deficits. DTVP-2 is a suitable tool to investigate links between visual perception, visual–motor integration and reading, and to differentiate cognitive profiles of children with developmental disabilities (i.e. DD, DCD, and comorbid children).

International audience

International audience; Many studies have shown that learning to read in a second language (L2) is similar, in many ways, to learning to read in a first language (L1). Nevertheless, reading development also relies upon oral language proficiency and is greatly influenced by orthographic consistency. This longitudinal study aimed to analyze the role of linguistic predictors (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, pseudoword repetition, morphosyntactic comprehension, lexical knowledge and rapid naming) in reading outcomes (fluency, accuracy and comprehension) in a group of bilingual children (n = 30) reading Italian as an L2, compared to a group of monolingual children (n = 56). We ran a multi-group structural equation model. Our findings showed that rapid automatized naming was a significant predictor of reading speed in both groups. However, the study revealed different patterns of predictors for reading accuracy, predictors for monolinguals being LK, phonological awareness and lexical knowledge, while pseudoword repetition was a predictor for bilinguals. Morphosyntactic comprehension was the most significant predictor of comprehension skills in bilingual children. Implications for clinical and educational settings are discussed.

National audience; La plupart des études aujourd'hui s'accordent sur le lien entre les compétences visuo attentionnelles et le contrôle oculomoteur lors de la lecture. Dans une étude précédente, nous avons montré que les enfants normo-lecteurs de CM2 sont capables de mettre en place, tout comme les lecteurs experts, un balayage visuo-attentionnel gauche-droite, se traduisant par une asymétrie dans le patron d'atterrissage de la position d'arrivée dans les mots (Bellocchi et al, 2013). Ce mécanisme dépend de la présence d’espaces entre les caractères (i.e. caractère discret du stimulus, Ducrot et Pynte, 2002). Par ailleurs, il semblerait que celui-ci soit moins automatisé chez des enfants avec un plus faible niveau de lecture ou atteints d’une dyslexie. En outre, certaines études ont montré récemment que l'augmentation de l'espacement entre les lettres (ou entre les mots) améliore la lisibilité des textes, en particulier pour les enfants dyslexiques (ex. Perea et al., 2012 ; Zorzi et al., 2012). Compte tenu de l'importance du caractère discret dans la programmation des saccades et de l'importance de l'augmentation de l'espacement inter-lettre pour la lisibilité du texte chez les dyslexiques, l'objectif de cette étude est d'examiner si l'augmentation de l’espacement inter-lettre pouvait générer une programmation saccadique plus précise, et de cette façon aider plus spécifiquement les apprentis lecteurs et les enfants dyslexiques.Pour explorer cette question, nous avons mesuré les mouvements oculaires de trois groupes d'enfants : dyslexiques, normo-lecteurs avec le même âge lexical des dyslexiques et normo-lecteurs avec le même âge chronologique des dyslexiques. Pendant l’enregistrement des mouvements oculaires, les participants ont effectué deux tâches chacun, présentées de manière contrebalancée : une tâche de bissection oculaire latéralisée (les participants devaient viser avec leur yeux une position qu'ils pensaient être le milieu du stimulus) et une tâche de décision lexicale latéralisée (TDL). Le type de stimulus - tâche de bissection (mots vs stimuli non-linguistiques), TDL (mots vs pseudo-mots) et l’espacement (espacé vs espacement normal) - en combinaison avec le champ visuel de présentation (gauche vs droite) ont été manipulés.Les résultats principaux ont montré que la programmation de la saccade est modulée par l’espacement, le champ visuel et le niveau de lecture. En particulier, la taille de l’asymétrie est plus importante dans la TDL qui nécessite davantage de se positionner au bon endroit dans les deux champs visuels. De plus, les dyslexiques et les apprentis lecteurs sont capables d’augmenter la taille de leur saccade dans la TDL : leur stratégie de lecture étant encore parfois basée sur le décodage, il est d’autant plus important de se positionner au début des mots dans la TDL. Pour terminer, les résultats ne semblent pas aller dans le sens d’un effet de facilitation de l’augmentation de l’espacement sur la programmation saccadique, quel que soit le niveau de lecture des enfants.

International audience

International audience; 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. In a previous eye movement study (Bellocchi & Ducrot, submitted), it has been showed that fifth grade typical reading children take the direction of attentional scanning (left-to-right) into account, which results in asymmetrical landing-position pattern: this mechanism depends on the discreteness of the stimulus and interestingly, it is less irrepressible in lower reading level children and in children with reading disability. Furthermore, some studies have demonstrated that increasing inter-letter spacing or inter-word spacing improves the legibility of texts, especially for dyslexic children (e.g. Zorzi et al., 2012): is this improvement linked to a bigger inter-letter saliency which produces, in turn, a more precise saccade programming? To explore this question we assessed the eye movements of three groups of children: dyslexic readers, unimpaired reading-level controls, and unimpaired chronological-age controls, using a lateralized bisection task (participants were asked to move their eyes to a position they thought to be the middle of the stimulus) and a lexical decision task. The type of stimulus – bisection task (words vs. non-linguistic stimuli), LDT (words vs. pseudowords) and crowding (spaced vs. unspaced) - in combination with the stimulus presentation side (left vs. right) were manipulated. Main results showed that saccade computation seems to be modulated by crowding, stimulus presentation side and reading level. Results are discussed with respect to current models of oculomotor control in typical and defective reading.

Autres productions; International audience

International audience

International audience

Crowding is defined as the negative effect obtained by adding visual distractors around a central target which has to be identified. Some studies have suggested the presence of a marked crowding effect in developmental dyslexia (e.g. Atkinson, 1991; Spinelli et al., 2002). Inspired by Spinelli’s (2002) experimental design, we explored the hypothesis that the crowding effect may affect dyslexics’ response times (RTs) and accuracy in identification tasks dealing with words, pseudowords, illegal non-words and symbolstrings. Moreover, our study aimed to clarify the relationship between the crowding phenomenon and the word-reading process, in an inter-language comparison perspective. For this purpose we studied twenty-two French dyslexics and twenty-two Italian dyslexics (total forty-four dyslexics), compared to forty-four subjects matched for reading level (22 French and 22 Italians) and forty-four chronological age-matched subjects (22 French and 22 Italians). Children were all tested on reading and cognitive abilities. Results showed no differences between French and Italian participants suggesting that performances were homogenous. Dyslexic children were all significantly impaired in words and pseudowords reading compared to their normal reading controls. Regarding the identification task with which we assessed crowding effect, both accuracy and RTs showed a lexicality effect which meant that the recognition of words was more accurate and faster in words than pseudowords, non-words and symbolstrings. Moreover, compared to normal readers, dyslexics’ RTs and accuracy were impaired only for verbal materials but not for non-verbal material; these results are in line with the phonological hypothesis (Griffiths & Snowling, 2002; Snowling, 2000; 2006) . RTs revealed a general crowding effect (RTs in the crowding condition were slower than those recorded in the isolated condition) affecting all the subjects’ performances. This effect, however, emerged to be not specific for dyslexics. Data didn’t reveal a significant effect of language, allowing the generalization of the obtained results. We also analyzed the performance of two subgroups of dyslexics, categorized according to their reading abilities. The two subgroups produced different results regarding the crowding effect and type of material, suggesting that it is meaningful to take into account also the heterogeneity of the dyslexia disorder. Finally, we also analyzed the relationship of the identification task with both reading and cognitive abilities. In conclusion, this study points out the importance of comparing visual tasks performances of dyslexic participants with those of their reading level-matched controls. This approach may improve our comprehension of the potential causal link between crowding and reading (Goswami, 2003).

International audience; Many studies have shown that learning to read in a second language (L2) is similar, in many ways, to learning to read in a first language (L1). Nevertheless, reading development also relies upon oral language proficiency and is greatly influenced by orthographic consistency. This longitudinal study aimed to analyze the role of linguistic predictors (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, pseudoword repetition, morphosyntactic comprehension, lexical knowledge and rapid naming) in reading outcomes (fluency, accuracy and comprehension) in a group of bilingual children (n = 30) reading Italian as an L2, compared to a group of monolingual children (n = 56). We ran a multi-group structural equation model. Our findings showed that rapid automatized naming was a significant predictor of reading speed in both groups. However, the study revealed different patterns of predictors for reading accuracy, predictors for monolinguals being LK, phonological awareness and lexical knowledge, while pseudoword repetition was a predictor for bilinguals. Morphosyntactic comprehension was the most significant predictor of comprehension skills in bilingual children. Implications for clinical and educational settings are discussed.