Catch of the Day: Search

The goal of this app is to improve visual scanning and discrimination of numbers vs. letters as the complexity of the visual field increases. Appropriate for children learning the difference between numbers and letters, and children and adults post-brain injury/stroke that could benefit from a visual search task that gradually increases in complexity. Letters and numbers are randomly displayed on the screen. The player scans the screen looking for the three numbers. Play starts with 20-25 targets and foils on the screen and uppercase letters. When the player successfully finds the numbers in less than 10 seconds per screen, the app moves them to lowercase letters and then both upper and lowercase letters. Level 2 has 40-50 targets and foils. Level 3 has 70-80 targets and foils. Level 4 has 100-115 targets and foils. For visually impaired players, or players with severe disability, there is an option to increase the text size—which significantly reduces the number of items on the screen. Options include the ability to show rewards after a certain number of screens have been viewed, select fonts of different visual complexity, and change the number of targets—up to seven. Results can be printed or emailed and are saved for download using iTunes. Rationale: This task is intended for clients in Rancho levels VI and above. Stimuli are randomly presented in all quadrants of the visual field requiring ongoing sustained visual attention, visual search, and discrimination, again drawing upon Luria’s (1973) third functional unit, planning and verification of activity. This game is appropriate for children and adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, Mild Traumatic Brain Injury or Post Concussion Syndrome. The focus is to train sustained attention during a visual perceptual number/letter discrimination task.