Bournemouth University, Faculty of Science & Technology, Bournemouth, BH12 1PH, United Kingdom.
University of Fribourg, Department of Psychology, iBM lab, Fribourg, 1700, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2019 Mar 12;9(1):4176. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39737-7.
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.
在过去的 20 年中，人们对在更自然的条件下研究视觉注意过程越来越感兴趣。在本研究中，我们建议确定儿童在视觉引导任务中表现出与成人相似的表现和注意力控制的关键年龄；在自然动态和具有社会相关性的情境中：过马路。我们监测了 5 至 15 岁的成年人和儿童在观看包含不同交通密度和/或有无行人的道路交通视频时的视觉探索和过马路决策。5-10 岁（y/o）的儿童表现出较少的系统注视模式。更具体地说，成年人和 11-15 岁的儿童主要注视车辆出现的点，这是一个用于任务采样诊断信息的最佳位置。相比之下，在交通密度较高时，5-10 岁的儿童更多地关注社交相关的刺激物，并关注车辆在轨迹上更远的移动。至关重要的是，与 11-15 岁的儿童和成年人相比，5-10 岁的儿童做出的过马路决策也更多。我们的研究结果揭示了在过马路任务中，注意力控制和过马路决策在 10 岁左右发生了关键转变。
