Exploring visual search performance in preschool children with cerebral visual impairment: a modified approach

Visual search difficulties are common in children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI), due to higher-order visual selective attention (VSA) deficits. However, little is known about children with CVI below 6 years. This international multi-centre study explored VSA through search performance and efficiency in preschool children aged 3-5 years with CVI (n = 24), or a CVI-risk (n = 20) compared with neurotypical children (n = 47). Search performance on the paper-pencil NEPSY Visual Attention task was measured by accuracy, commission errors, and completion time. Search efficiency was assessed by reconstructing the cancellation path to obtain inter-target distances, intersections, and cluster visits. Children with CVI demonstrated significantly lower accuracy, longer completion times, greater inter-target distances, and more revisits to clusters of targets compared with both CVI-risk and neurotypical children. We conclude that by using a modified approach of a paper-pencil search task, first signs of global and local VSA deficits can be detected, offering clinical insights.