Abstract
AbstractSpatial perception abilities enable individuals to explore a visual field, to detect spatial position and to infer relationships between visual stimuli. Written words and text are conceptualized spatially along a horizontal mental line, but little is known about the way children develop these representations. The exact relationship between visuo-spatial perception and academic achievement has never been directly assessed. Therefore, our aim was to study the developmental trajectory of space perception abilities by assessing perceptual, attentional and memory components, the relationship between these abilities and reading achievement in school-age children. Forty-nine children aged between 6.5 and 11 years old were divided into four age groups and were assessed with visual bisection, visual search and visual memory location tasks. The results showed that the groups of older children, from the age of nine, improved significantly on the bisection and visual search tasks with respect to all visual fi...
Highlights
Left-to-right asymmetry is common across several cognitive domains
The results showed that the groups of older children, from the age of nine, improved significantly on the bisection and visual search tasks with respect to all visual fields, while the groups of younger children showed more errors in the left visual field (LVF)
Our results show that spatial perception abilities ameliorate throughout childhood and maintain a dynamic relationship during reading acquisition
Summary
Left-to-right asymmetry is common across several cognitive domains (e.g. language, reading and time perception, for a review, see Boroditsky, 2011). Spatial perception abilities enable the processing of spatial information by exploring stimuli in the visual field, detecting their spatial position and the relationships between them These visuo-spatial processing abilities are important for the quality of spatial analysis and spatial organization that, in turn, are fundamental to the development of several specific visuo-spatial abilities, such as spatial attention, orientation, memory and spatial imagery (Barisnikov, 2009; Booth & Siegler, 2006; de Hevia, Izard, Coubart, Spelke, & Streri, 2014; Piazza, Fumarola, Chinello, & Melcher, 2011; Smith & Chatterjee, 2008). These abilities constitute spatial cognition, which is essential for the development of spatial representations, allowing the individual to perform complex spatial tasks (e.g. pattern construction and drawing) and to acquire academic skills (e.g. reading, geometry and numerical skills)
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