title: The forest, the trees, and the leaves: Differences of processing across development.
abstract: To act and think, children and adults are continually required to ignore irrelevant visual information to focus on task-relevant items. As real-world visual information is organized into structures, we designed a feature visual search task containing 3-level hierarchical stimuli (i.e., local shapes that constituted intermediate shapes that formed the global figure) that was presented to 112 participants aged 5, 6, 9, and 21 years old. This task allowed us to explore (a) which level is perceptively the most salient at each age (i.e., the fastest detected level) and (b) what kind of attentional processing occurs for each level across development (i.e., efficient processing: detection time does not increase with the number of stimuli on the display; less efficient processing: detection time increases linearly with the growing number of distractors). Results showed that the global level was the most salient at 5 years of age, whereas the global and intermediate levels were both salient for 9-year-olds and adults. Interestingly, at 6 years of age, the intermediate level was the most salient level. Second, all participants showed an efficient processing of both intermediate and global levels of hierarchical stimuli, and a less efficient processing of the local level, suggesting a local disadvantage rather than a global advantage in visual search. The cognitive cost for selecting the local target was higher for 5- and 6-year-old children compared to 9-year-old children and adults. These results are discussed with regards to the development of executive control. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Claire-Sara
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Krakowski
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3972-2575
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Poirel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vidal
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Margot
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Roëll
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Arlette
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pineau
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Grégoire
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Borst
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Paris Descartes.
authors.forename: Olivier
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Houdé
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult