Lifespan changes in attention revisited: Everyday visual search.

Abstract

This study compared visual search under everyday conditions among participants across the life span (healthy participants in 4 groups, with average age of 6 years, 8 years, 22 years, and 75 years, and 1 group averaging 73 years with a history of falling). The task involved opening a door and stepping into a room find 1 of 4 everyday objects (apple, golf ball, coffee can, toy penguin) visible on shelves. The background for this study included 2 well-cited laboratory studies that pointed to different cognitive mechanisms underlying each end of the U-shaped pattern of visual search over the life span (Hommel et al., 2004; Trick & Enns, 1998). The results recapitulated some of the main findings of the laboratory study (e.g., a U-shaped function, dissociable factors for maturation and aging), but there were several unique findings. These included large differences in the baseline salience of common objects at different ages, visual eccentricity effects that were unique to aging, and visual field effects that interacted strongly with age. These findings highlight the importance of studying cognitive processes in more natural settings, where factors such as personal relevance, life history, and bodily contributions to cognition (e.g., limb, head, and body movements) are more readily revealed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Efficiency and accuracy of visual search develop at different rates from early childhood through early adulthood

“…This paper reports on the first large developmental study of unique object search. Note that Brennan, Bruderer, Liu-Ambrose, Handy, and Enns (2017) did quite a large life-span study in which observers actually searched in a real room for real objects, although their study was not directly designed to test developmental changes; they only tested children of about 6 and 8 years of age. In our study, the aim is to compare different developmental changes from 4 to 25 years of age in a large sample of participants (293) to track the time course of cognitive processes immersed in a unique real-world object search.…”

“…This is often taken to show immaturity in the development of topdown attentional control processes (Donnelly et al, 2007;Merrill & Conners, 2013;Michael et al, 2013;Trick & Enns, 1998;Woods et al, 2013). But some studies have found that differences between adults and children were not that large (Hommel et al, 2004) or may depend on motivational factors: Brennan et al (2017) found that differences between children and young adults disappeared when the target was a toy penguin that might be intrinsically interesting to children. The diversity of results may have several causes.…”

Refinement and preliminary evaluation of two tablet‐based tests of real‐world visual function

“…A related limitation is that we only examined young adults. Older adults are often slower and less accurate at locating objects in cluttered scenes . In future, it would therefore be helpful to collect additional normative data for older adults performing the Search task.…”

“…Older adults are often slower and less accurate at locating objects in cluttered scenes. [68][69][70] In future, it would therefore be helpful to collect additional normative data for older adults performing the Search task. There may also be age-related changes in performance on the Faces test also.…”

Visuo-attentional correlates of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children with Down syndrome: A comparative study with children with idiopathic ASD

“…Conjunction search trials have been found to be more sensitive than single feature search paradigms at eliciting iASD and non-iASD group differences in performance (e.g., Kaldy et al, 2011 ; O’Riordan, 2000 ; O’Riordan, Plaisted, Driver, & Baron-Cohen, 2001 ; Plaisted et al, 1998 ). Further, single feature search performance plateaus by approximately 2 years of age, typically, while conjunction search performance continues to develop throughout childhood and adolescence ( Brennan, Bruderer, Liu-Ambrose, Handy, & Enns, 2017 ; Donnelly et al, 2007 ; Woods et al, 2013 ). Considering the chronological age and developmental level of our participants, it was deemed more appropriate to examine conjunction search performance in the current study.…”