Impaired ability in visual-spatial attention in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia

Many studies demonstrated that alphabetic language speaking children with developmental dyslexia had a deficit in visual-spatial attention, especially in rapid orienting of the attentional spotlight. Chinese, as a logographic language, is characterized as highly visual-spatial complexity. To date, few studies explored the visual-spatial attention of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia. The present study examined the visual-spatial attention of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia using the visual search task. The results showed that Chinese children with developmental dyslexia had poor performances in conjunction search, indicating that they had a deficit in the rapid orienting of visual-spatial attention. Meanwhile, only the conjunction search was a significant predictor of Chinese characters reading when other variables were controlled. These results indicated that Chinese dyslexic children had a deficit in visual-spatial attention, and visual-spatial attention played a special role in Chinese reading development.