Links between organized visual search and reading ability in French primary school children.

Visual search skills develop substantially during the primary school years, and in parallel with children's reading achievement. Reading requires an efficient visual search and exposure to reading from the left to the right could also influence the way we explore space. No study, however, made links between visual search strategies and reading ability. In this study, 70 primary school children performed a cancellation task (Bells test) and reading tests. Our results showed that reading was closely linked to visual search accuracy but also to visual search organization, even after controlling for age for some measures. Along with the development of reading abilities, children made fewer revisitation, moved more to the nearest unmarked targets than to the farthest ones and explored more in lines. It appears, therefore, essential to take more into account the visual search organization of children with reading impairments such as dyslexia.

Neural oscillations track natural but not artificial fast speech: Novel insights from speech-brain coupling using MEG.

Neural oscillations contribute to speech parsing via cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures, including syllable rate. While the properties of neural entrainment have been largely probed with speech stimuli at either normal or artificially accelerated rates, the important case of natural fast speech has been largely overlooked. Using magnetoencephalography, we found that listening to naturally-produced speech was associated with cortico-acoustic coupling, both at normal (∼6 syllables/s) and fast (∼9 syllables/s) rates, with a corresponding shift in peak entrainment frequency. Interestingly, time-compressed sentences did not yield such coupling, despite being generated at the same rate as the natural fast sentences. Additionally, neural activity in right motor cortex exhibited stronger tuning to natural fast rather than to artificially accelerated speech, and showed evidence for stronger phase-coupling with left temporo-parietal and motor areas. These findings are highly relevant for our understanding of the role played by auditory and motor cortex oscillations in the perception of naturally produced speech.

Visual search strategies in children: A reflection of working memory processes?

Visual search is not only less accurate but also less organized in children than in adults. However, visual search strategies in children have not been extensively studied and they are not evaluated in clinical practice. Working memory could play a critical role for the execution and the maintaining of a visual search strategy. Few studies if any have explored the links between visual search organization and working memory in children. In the present study, 54 primary school children performed a cancellation task (Bells test) and working memory tests (span tasks). Our results suggested that, contrary to visual search accuracy, visual search organization was significantly linked to working memory and, more specifically, to the efficiency of the central executive component. There is, thus, a real need to better understand the visual search process and to improve its assessment with cancellation tests in clinical practice.