Marlou JG Kooiker

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at Erasmus MC

Development of visuospatial attention can be quantified from infancy onward using visually-guided eye movement responses. We investigated the interaction between eye movement response times and salience in target areas of visual stimuli over age in a cohort of typically developing children. A preferential looking (PL) paradigm consisting of stimuli...

Purpose: Measurements of visual and oculomotor functions are essential for providing tailored support to visually impaired children. In young or intellectually disabled children these measurements can be difficult or even impossible to perform. Recordings of orienting gaze in response to specific visual information, made with eye tracking, may off...

Background: Children born preterm are at risk of visuospatial attention orienting and processing dysfunctions, which can be quantified early in life using visually-guided eye movement responses. Aims: To identify the prevalence and perinatal risk factors for visuospatial attention orienting and processing dysfunctions in children born preterm of 1...

Objectives To provide insight into early neurosensory development in children born very preterm, the current study assessed the association between early structural brain damage and functional visuospatial attention and motion processing from 1-year to 2-years CA. Study design In 112 children born <32 weeks gestational age (GA), we assessed brain...

Visual selective attention refers to the selection of relevant visual elements in a scene whilst ignoring irrelevant visual elements. Visual Selective Attention Dysfunctions (VSAD) are prevalent in children with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and Dyslexia. An important issue in the pediatric neuro...

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...

Introduction Global Visual Selective Attention (VSA) is the ability to integrate multiple visual elements of a scene to achieve visual overview. This is essential for navigating crowded environments and recognizing objects or faces. Clinical pediatric research on global VSA deficits primarily focuses on autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, in c...

The ability to orient attention to one’s environment is a prerequisite for developing executive functions (EF) from preschool age. Very preterm children are vulnerable for delays in visual orienting function (VOF) and EF deficits. This study aimed to investigate associations between objective VOF and subjective parent-reported EF in very preterm–bo...

Visual search problems are often reported in children with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). To tackle the clinical challenge of objectively differentiating CVI from other neurodevelopmental disorders, we developed a novel test battery. Visual search tasks were coupled with verbal and gaze-based measurements. Two search tasks were performed by chil...

Visual search is often impaired in children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI), but the current assessment of visual search performance is limited. This study aimed to investigate underlying visual search processes in detail by including gaze-based measurements. Twin brothers (age 11.8 years), one diagnosed with CVI and one with neurotypical dev...

Daily problems of children with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) are often misinterpreted as symptoms of behavioural disorders or learning disabilities instead of higher order visual function (HOVF) deficits. It is difficult to differentiate between various paediatric clinical groups based on daily manifestations. We used two CVI inventories (V-CVI...

Background Cerebral visual impairment (CVI) is a heterogeneous brain-based visual processing disorder in which basic visual orienting functions (VOF) and higher-order perception can be impaired. Aims To evaluate (1) the test-retest reliability and variability of an eye tracking-based VOF paradigm, and related clinical characteristics, and (2) the...

This study aims to investigate distractibility quantified by recording and analyzing eye movements during task-irrelevant distraction in children with and without ADHD and in children with and without neurological disorders. Gaze behavior data and press latencies of 141 participants aged 6–17 that were collected during a computerized distraction pa...

Background Children with cerebral visual impairment (CVI) present heterogeneous visual orienting functions (VOF) and higher-order perception. Multiple assessment methods evaluate CVI, but the relations between them remain unclear. Aim To investigate the relations between VOF and (1) daily life behaviour and (2) visuoperceptual tests in children wi...

Introduction: Children with early brain damage or dysfunction are at risk of developing cerebral visual impairment (CVI), including visual processing dysfunctions (VPD), which currently remain largely undetected until school age. Our aim was to systematically screen for possible VPD in children born very or extremely preterm from 1 to 2 years corre...

Background The ability to perceive and process visuospatial information is a condition for broader neurodevelopment. We examined the association of early visuospatial attention and processing with later neurodevelopmental outcome in very preterm infants. Methods Visuospatial attention and processing was assessed in 209 children (<30 weeks gestatio...

Abstract Background An increasing number of children are suffering from brain damage-related visual processing dysfunctions (VPD). There is currently a lack of evidence-based intervention methods that can be used early in development. We developed a visual intervention protocol suitable from 1 year of age. The protocol is structured, comprehensive...

Background An increasing amount of children suffer from brain damage-related visual processing dysfunctions (VPD). At present, there is a lack of evidence-based intervention methods that can be used early in development. We developed a visual intervention protocol suitable from 1 year of age. The protocol is structured, comprehensive and individual...

Background An increasing amount of children suffer from brain damage-related visual processing dysfunctions (VPD). At present, there is a lack of evidence-based rehabilitation methods that can be used early in development. We developed a visual rehabilitation protocol suitable from 1 year of age. The protocol contains objective, quantitative outcom...

Visual closure is the ability to visualize a complete whole when an incomplete picture is presented. The aim of the present study was to investigate the Kaufman Gestalt closure task in children with cerebral and ocular visual impairments. Looking behavior was assessed by an eye tracker system to quantify the number and duration of fixations. We fou...

Background: Peripheral and central visual processing development highly depends on the integrity of the visual sensory system and the allocation of visuospatial attention. Method: We quantitatively followed visual sensory functions (VSF) and visuospatial orienting functions (VOF) over two years in 77 children (1–13 years) with different types of vi...

Background Children born extremely preterm (<30 weeks) are at high risk of neurological damage and concurrent cerebral visual dysfunctions. With a recently developed automated method based on eye tracking, visual processing delays were found already at 1 year of age, even without evident brain damage1. We investigated whether these delays persisted...

Visual problems that occur early in life can have major impact on a child's development. Without verbal communication and only based on observational methods, it is difficult to make a quantitative assessment of a child's visual problems. This limits accurate diagnostics in children under the age of 4 years and in children with intellectual disabil...

Purpose In 1994 we described infants who presented at age 2-4 months with tonic downgaze, chin-up head posture and low-frequency, upgaze-evoked nystagmus that disappeared at age 2, accompanied by high-frequency, horizontal nystagmus that persisted. In most of these, abnormal ERGs and CACNA1F, NYX or GPR179 mutations confirming CSNB were found. As...

Background From the need for a quantitative method to examine visual processing in young children, we measured ocular orienting responses to visual stimuli (form, motion, expansion, color, contrast, cartoons). Reliability and applicability of this method were assessed. New Method 80 children (1-12 years) with visual impairments and a reference gro...

We recently introduced a method based on quantification of orienting responses toward visual stimuli to assess the quality of visual information processing in children. In the present study, we examined the relationship between orienting responses and factors that are associated with visual processing impairments in current clinical practice. Respo...

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 co...