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

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.