Age-related similarities in contextual cueing in the presence of unpredictive distracters

The contextual cueing effect disappears during joint search in preschool children

During preschool years, children's interacting with others increases. One of the involved developmental skills is task co-representation, through which children aged 5 years and older represent a partner's task in a similar way to their own task. In adults, task co-representation makes participants attend to and form memories of objects relevant to both their own task and their partner's task; however, it is unclear whether children can also form such memories. In Experiment 1, we examined the memory facilitation of joint search using a contextual cueing effect paradigm. Children were presented with search displays repeatedly with the same or random layouts and searched and responded to the target either alone (the single group; n = 32; M_age = 73.6 months, range = 61-80) or with their parent (the joint group; n = 32; M_age = 74.3 months, range = 64-81). Results showed that the search with the same layouts was faster than that with the random layouts for the single group, indicating that children form associative memories of target and distractors relevant to their own task. For the joint group, this effect was not statistically different from that of the single group, with exploratory analysis suggesting that it was disrupted. In Experiment 2, children performed the search with a peer (n = 32; M_age = 72.7 months, range = 67-79) and the effect was also not found. Our findings suggest that the self's and partner's tasks are represented but might not be incorporated into associative memory in 5- and 6-year-old children.

Visual statistical learning in children and adults: evidence from probability cueing

In visual statistical learning (VSL), one can extract and exhibit memory for the statistical regularities of target locations in an incidental manner. The current study examined the development of VSL using the probability cueing paradigm with salient perceptual cues. We also investigated the elicited attention gradient phenomenon in VSL. In a visual search task, the target first appeared more often in one quadrant (i.e., rich) than the other quadrants (i.e., sparse). Then, the participants rotated the screen by 90° and the targets appeared in the four quadrants with equal probabilities. Each quadrant had a unique background color and was, hence, associated with salient perceptual cues. 1st-4th graders and adults participated. All participants showed probability cueing effects to a similar extent. We observed an attention gradient phenomenon, as all participants responded slower to the sparse quadrant that was distant from, rather than the ones that were adjacent to the rich quadrant. In the testing phase, all age groups showed persistent attentional biases based on both egocentric and allocentric perspectives. These findings showed that probability cueing effects may develop early, that perceptual cues can bias attention guidance during VSL for both children and adults, and that VSL can elicit a spaced-based attention gradient phenomenon for children and adults.

The functional consequences of social attention on memory precision and on memory-guided orienting in development

Adults are slower at locating targets in naturalistic scenes containing a social distractor compared to an equally salient non-social distractor, and their subsequent memory for targets in social scenes is poorer. Therefore, adults’ social biases affect not only attention, but also their memory. Six-to-ten year-old children and young adults took part in the current study, employing a combination of behavioural and eye-tracking measures. Social stimuli in naturalistic scenes distracted both children and adults during visual search, as demonstrated by their gaze behavior and search times. In addition, eye-tracking revealed even greater attentional capture by social distractors for children. Memory for targets was worse in social compared to non-social scenes. Intriguingly, children demonstrated overall better memory precision than adults. Finally, when participants detected previously learnt targets within visual scenes, adults were slower for targets appearing at unexpected (invalid) locations within social scenes compared to non-social scenes, but this was not the case for children. In their entirety, these findings suggest that the interplay between social attentional biases, memory and memory-guided attention is complex and modulated by age-related differences. Complementary methodologies in developmental cognitive neuroscience shed light on the mechanisms through which social attention and memory interact over development.

Implicit memory of locations and identities: A developmental study

Objects in the environment have both location and identity properties. However, it is unclear how these independent properties are processed and combined in the implicit domain. The current study investigated the development of the implicit memory of object locations and object identities, both independently and combined, and the relation between implicit memory and working memory (WM) for these properties. Three age groups participated: 6- and 7-year-old children, 9- and 10-year-old children, and adults. Children and adults completed a repeated search paradigm. In the learning phase, targets' locations were consistently predicted by both the identities and locations of the distracters. In the test phase, either both remained predictive or just the identities or just the locations of the distracters predicted the location of the target. All groups showed significant implicit learning when both the identities and locations of the distracters remained predictive. When only the locations but not the identities of the distracters were predictive, adults and 9- and 10-year-olds showed significant learning, whereas 6- and 7-year-olds did not. When only the identities but not the locations of the distracters were predictive, none of the groups showed significant learning effects. In evaluating the contributions of either visual or spatial WM to implicit learning and memory, we found that children with smaller visual WM exhibited larger implicit memory effects for object identities than did children with larger visual WM. Taken together, the results indicate that children's ability to differentiate identity and location undergoes development even in the implicit domain.