Effects of dual tasking on postural and gait performances in children with cerebral palsy and healthy children.

Simultaneous execution of motor and cognitive tasks is embedded in the daily life of children. 53 children of 7-12 years and 22 adults (study 1), 20 healthy children and 20 children of 7-12 years with cerebral palsy (study 2) performed a Stroop-animal task simultaneously with a standing or a walking task in order to determine the attentional demand of postural control and locomotion. Dual-task cost decreased with advancing age in healthy children during balance.

Impact of orthographic transparency on typical and atypical reading development: evidence in French-Spanish bilingual children.

The present study aimed to quantify cross-linguistic modulations of the contribution of phonemic awareness skills and visual attention span (VA Span) skills (number of visual elements that can be processed simultaneously) to reading speed and accuracy in 18 Spanish-French balanced bilingual children with and without developmental dyslexia. The children were administered two similar reading batteries in French and Spanish. The deficits of the dyslexic children in reading accuracy were mainly visible in their opaque orthography (French) whereas difficulties indexed by reading speed were observed in both their opaque and transparent orthographies.

Fractionating the multi-character processing deficit in developmental dyslexia: Evidence from two case studies.

While there is growing evidence that some dyslexic children suffer from a deficit in simultaneously processing multiple visually displayed elements, the precise nature of the deficit remains largely unclear. The aim of the present study is to investigate possible cognitive impairments at the source of this deficit in dyslexic children. The visual processing of simultaneously presented letters was thus thoroughly assessed in two dyslexic children by means of a task that requires the report of briefly presented multi-letters arrays.

The eye movements of dyslexic children during reading and visual search: impact of the visual attention span.

The eye movements of 14 French dyslexic children having a VA span reduction and 14 normal readers were compared in two tasks of visual search and text reading. The dyslexic participants made a higher number of rightward fixations in reading only. They simultaneously processed the same low number of letters in both tasks whereas normal readers processed far more letters in reading.