How Children with Congenital Limb Deficiencies Visually Attend to Their Limbs and Prostheses: Eye Tracking of Displayed Still Images and Visuospatial Body Knowledge

Purpose: This study aimed to clarify how children with congenital limb deficiencies visually attend to their bodies, particularly their limbs and prostheses. Methods: Participants included children with and without congenital limb deficiencies. They were shown photographs of themselves and their visual attention was measured using an eye tracker. Results: Six children with lower limb deficiencies (age [mean +/- SD]: 8.8 +/- 2.9; 2 girls and 4 boys), six children with upper limb deficiencies (age: 7.0 +/- 2.3; 2 girls and 4 boys), and ten control children (age: 7.7 +/- 1.9; 5 girls and 5 boys) were included. Children with congenital upper/lower limb deficiencies looked at their upper/lower limbs as often or more than the control children. Prompts to direct their visual attention to their limbs had limited efficacy. Conclusions: To improve the body knowledge of limbs, approaches other than visual recognition prompting, such as improving linguistic understanding, might be considered.