Atypical Visual Scan Path Affects Remembering in ADHD

Abstract

Objective:Several studies agree on the link between attention and eye movements during reading. It has been well established that attention and working memory (WM) interact. A question that could be addressed to better understand these relationships is: to what extent can an attention deficit affect eye movements and, consequently, remembering a word? The main aims of the present study were (1) to compare visual patterns of word stimuli between children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and typically developing (TD) children, during a visual task on word stimuli; (2) to examine the WM accuracy of the word stimuli; and (3) to compare the dynamic of visual scan path in both groups.Method:A total of 49 children with ADHD, age and sex matched with 32 TD children, were recruited. We used eye-tracking technology in which the Word Memory Test was implemented. To highlight the scan path of participants, two measures were used: the ordered direction of reading and the entropy index.Results:ADHD groups showed a poorer WM than TD group. They did not follow a typical scan path across the words compared with TD children, but their visual scanning was discontinuous, uncoordinated, and chaotic. ADHD groups showed an index of entropy among the four categories of saccades higher than TD group.Conclusions:The findings were discussed in light of two directions: the relationship between atypical visual scan path and WM and the training implications related to the necessity of redirecting the dynamic of visual scan path in ADHD to improve WM.

Visual Search in Chinese Children With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Comorbid Developmental Dyslexia: Evidence for Pathogenesis From Eye Movements

“…We mainly focused on the results of fixation duration while the visual scanning was not analyzed owing to sparse fixations in each trial. The discrepancy in findings between the present study and the study of Mohammadhasani et al (2019) may be attributed to different types of tasks or modes of attention shifting. Nevertheless, the current study and previous studies (e.g., Gould et al, 2001;Deans et al, 2010;Türkan et al, 2016;Mohammadhasani et al, 2019) have converged to show that individuals with ADHD have poor oculomotor control.…”

“…The discrepancy in findings between the present study and the study of Mohammadhasani et al (2019) may be attributed to different types of tasks or modes of attention shifting. Nevertheless, the current study and previous studies (e.g., Gould et al, 2001;Deans et al, 2010;Türkan et al, 2016;Mohammadhasani et al, 2019) have converged to show that individuals with ADHD have poor oculomotor control. Moreover, the present study has found that the deficit of ADHD can arise in the early processing stage and that the deficit of comorbidity (ADHD + DD) has a unique deficit in the late processing stage.…”

“…These findings indicate that the comorbidity (ADHD + DD) has a unique deficit in controlled processes and inhibition responses when compared with the pure ADHD and the control, which is also in line with the distinguished cognitive deficit model. Relevantly, Mohammadhasani et al (2019) compared the eye-movement measures between ADHD and typically developing children in a word memory test, in which participants were requested to view all the words (16 words arranged in a 4 × 4 matrix) in each trial and repeat the word list after each presentation. They did not find a reliable group effect on fixation length, but they observed atypical visual scanning for ADHD individuals.…”

“…Although the core deficit of ADHD and DD was believed to be attention and language, respectively (Weiler et al, 2002), some studies have reported that children with ADHD also showed deficits in letter or word recognition (Wei et al, 2014;Lúcio et al, 2017;Mohammadhasani et al, 2019) and that DD children also demonstrated deficits in visual attention or response inhibition (Willcutt et al, 2000;Martin et al, 2006;Vidyasagar and Kristen, 2010). These results may provide evidence of the shared cognitive deficit model.…”

The Role of a Virtual Avatar in Attention and Memory Tasks in Rett Syndrome

“…We consider the ndings reported in this article a relevant contribution to the introduction of a new generation of embodied interactive virtual agents (interactive avatars) aimed at supporting subjects with RTT in their everyday activities 49,50 . These ndings can help families and educators to identify what sort of software can be effectively used to help subjects with RTT, and also software designers to make good evidence-based choices to offer more focused software, capable of giving signi cant performance improvements [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] .…”