Orienting Responses to Various Visual Stimuli in Children With Visual Processing Impairments or Infantile Nystagmus Syndrome

Abstract

Quantification of orienting responses can be used to differentiate between children with cerebral visual impairment and infantile nystagmus syndrome. To further improve the sensitivity of this method, we compared orienting responses to a Cartoon stimulus, which contains all sorts of visual information, to stimuli that contain only Contrast, Form coherence, Motion coherence, Color and Motion detection. The stimuli were shown on an eye tracker monitor using a preferential looking paradigm. We found that both groups of children showed general slowing in orienting responses compared to controls. The children with cerebral visual impairment had significantly prolonged responses to Cartoon compared to the children with nystagmus, whereas the children with nystagmus had prolonged responses to Motion detection and larger fixation areas. Previously reported differences in orienting responses to Cartoon were replicated. Application of specific visual information did not alter the sensitivity of the method to distinguish between children with visual processing deficits.

A Method to Quantify Visual Information Processing in Children Using Eye Tracking

“…In addition, children with nystagmus have lower fixation accuracy than children without nystagmus but with other types of visual impairment (mean difference = 0.71º; t = 5.03, p <0.001; Cohen's d = 1.04). This is consistent with previously published findings on GFA in subgroups of the present dataset 20,24,25 . …”

“…Although we limited ourselves to the presentation of results from cartoon stimuli, in future applications different visual modalities can be tested using other stimuli (e.g., distinct forms, motion, color and contrast information) 22,20,25 . That way, specific visual processing areas beyond the primary visual pathways are targeted, such as visual association areas in temporal or parietal cortex.…”

Reliability of visual orienting response measures in children with and without visual impairments

“…In the reference group we do not see a decrease in response time for motion. This stimulus might be more difficult to detect for children with visual (processing) impairments, who have slower response times and larger fixation areas for this stimulus than typically developing children, in this study and a previous one (Pel et al, 2013). These difficulties should be taken into account in future applications of this method, for example by providing a practice session before the start of the measurement.…”

“…Previous research showed that children with CVI had slower orienting responses to a variety of visual stimuli than typically developing children and than children with ocular motor impairments (Pel et al, 2010b(Pel et al, , 2013. The slower orienting responses could not be explained by other types of visual impairments, i.e.…”

Perceptual Learning in Children With Infantile Nystagmus: Effects on 2D Oculomotor Behavior

“…3,22 Training-induced acuity improvements might thus be related to prolonged foveation periods after training. Saccade latencies are also longer for individuals with IN compared with individuals with normal vision (NV), 17,23 which might explain the longer visual search times in children with IN. [24][25][26] Faster saccade initiation and improved landing position would particularly facilitate visual performance on tasks with time restrictions, such as our training tasks, since it would bring the target longer and closer to the center of the fovea.…”