The development of oculomotor suppression of salient distractors in children

Visuospatial, oculomotor, and executive reading skills evolve in elementary school, and errors are significant: a topological RAN study

We investigate the development of visuospatial and oculomotor reading skills in a cohort of elementary school children. Employing a longitudinal methodology, the study applies the Topological serial digit Rapid Automated Naming (Top-RAN) battery, which evaluates visuospatial reading skills leveraging metrics addressing crowding, distractors, and voluntary attention orientation. The participant pool comprises 142 students (66 males, 76 females), including 46 non-native speakers (21 males, 25 females), representing a diverse range of ethnic backgrounds. The Top-RAN dataset encompasses performance, error, and self-correction metrics for each subtest and student, underscoring the significance of these factors in the process of reading acquisition. Analytical methods include dimensionality reduction, clustering, and classification algorithms, consolidated into a Python package to facilitate reproducible results. Our results indicate that visuospatial reading abilities vary according to the task and demonstrate a marked evolution over time, as seen in the progressive decrease in execution times, errors, and self-corrections. This pattern supports the hypothesis that the growth of oculomotor, attentional, and executive skills is primarily fostered by educational experiences and maturation. This investigation provides valuable insights into the dynamic nature of these skills during pivotal educational stages.

Visual and cognitive processes contribute to age-related improvements in visual selective attention

Children (N = 103, 4-9 years, 59 females, 84% White, c. 2019) completed visual processing, visual feature integration (color, luminance, motion), and visual search tasks. Contrast sensitivity and feature search improved with age similarly for luminance and color-defined targets. Incidental feature integration improved more with age for color-motion than luminance-motion. Individual differences in feature search (β  = .11) and incidental feature integration (β  = .06) mediated age-related changes in conjunction visual search, an index of visual selective attention. These findings suggest that visual selective attention is best conceptualized as a series of developmental trajectories, within an individual, that vary by an object's defining features. These data have implications for design of educational and interventional strategies intended to maximize attention for learning and memory.

Investigating the role of spatial filtering on distractor suppression

In recent years, evidence has accumulated towards a distractor suppression mechanism that enables efficient selection of targets in a visual search task. According to these findings, the search for a target is faster in the presence of a salient distractor in a display among homogenous distractors as opposed to its absence. Studies have also shown that distractor suppression not only operates on the feature level but can also be spatially guided. The motivation of the current study was to examine if spatially guided distractor suppression can be goal-driven. We tested this across four experiments. In Experiment 1A, the task was to search for a shape target (e.g., a circle) and discriminate the orientation of the line within it. In some trials, a salient color distractor was presented in the display while participants were told that it appeared in one of the two locations on the horizontal axis (or the vertical axis, counterbalanced across participants). We expected enhanced distractor suppression when the salient distractor appeared within this "spatial filter" but did not find it since the target was also presented at the filtered locations. Experiment 1B replicated Experiment 1A, except that the target was always presented outside the filter; filtering enhanced search performance. In Experiment 2 even when the filter contained the salient distractor in only 65% of the filtered trials, filtering benefited search performance. In Experiment 3, the filter changed on every trial and did not benefit suppression.