The developmental trajectory of auditory attentional control functions in visually impaired, blind and sighted children

The ability to resist distraction and focus on task-relevant information is essential for successful learning.

School-aged children need to develop such executive functions and attentional control skills to perform well in school (Diamond, 2013). There is currently a great push toward using more educational games and digital technologies for teaching and learning.

Yet, current technologies for visually impaired and blind (VIB) children are limited and less accessible (Senjam et al., 2023).

However, educational technologies can be particularly valuable in supporting the developmental progress of VIB children, as braille readers must retain each successive Braille symbol in their working memory to build a representation of words (Mukamal, 2021).

Moreover, training studies targeting executive control functions focus mainly on sighted children, and the scope of transfer is still under debate (Gathercole et al., 2019).

Consequently, it is essential to employ more robust training methodologies that identify the factors that facilitate transfer (Green et al., 2019).

Co-designing training with VIB and sighted children will contribute to the development of educational technologies and increase their accessibility.

This Ph.D. project aims to investigate the developmental trajectories of auditory serial recall with and without distractor sounds in 6-12-year-old VIB and sighted children.