TY - JOUR
T1 - Developing attentional control in naturalistic dynamic road crossing situations
AU - Nicholls, Victoria I.
AU - Jean-Charles, Geraldine
AU - Lao, Junpeng
AU - de Lissa, Peter
AU - Caldara, Roberto
AU - Miellet, Sebastien
N1 - Copyright the Author(s) 2019. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.
PY - 2019/3/12
Y1 - 2019/3/12
N2 - In the last 20 years, there has been increasing interest in studying visual attentional processes under more natural conditions. In the present study, we propose to determine the critical age at which children show similar to adult performance and attentional control in a visually guided task; in a naturalistic dynamic and socially relevant context: road crossing. We monitored visual exploration and crossing decisions in adults and children aged between 5 and 15 while they watched road traffic videos containing a range of traffic densities with or without pedestrians. 5–10 year old (y/o) children showed less systematic gaze patterns. More specifically, adults and 11–15 y/o children look mainly at the vehicles’ appearing point, which is an optimal location to sample diagnostic information for the task. In contrast, 5–10 y/os look more at socially relevant stimuli and attend to moving vehicles further down the trajectory when the traffic density is high. Critically, 5-10 y/o children also make an increased number of crossing decisions compared to 11–15 y/os and adults. Our findings reveal a critical shift around 10 y/o in attentional control and crossing decisions in a road crossing task.
AB - In the last 20 years, there has been increasing interest in studying visual attentional processes under more natural conditions. In the present study, we propose to determine the critical age at which children show similar to adult performance and attentional control in a visually guided task; in a naturalistic dynamic and socially relevant context: road crossing. We monitored visual exploration and crossing decisions in adults and children aged between 5 and 15 while they watched road traffic videos containing a range of traffic densities with or without pedestrians. 5–10 year old (y/o) children showed less systematic gaze patterns. More specifically, adults and 11–15 y/o children look mainly at the vehicles’ appearing point, which is an optimal location to sample diagnostic information for the task. In contrast, 5–10 y/os look more at socially relevant stimuli and attend to moving vehicles further down the trajectory when the traffic density is high. Critically, 5-10 y/o children also make an increased number of crossing decisions compared to 11–15 y/os and adults. Our findings reveal a critical shift around 10 y/o in attentional control and crossing decisions in a road crossing task.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062892869&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-019-39737-7
DO - 10.1038/s41598-019-39737-7
M3 - Article
C2 - 30862845
AN - SCOPUS:85062892869
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 9
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
IS - 1
M1 - 4176
ER -