Skip to main content

Developing attentional control in naturalistic dynamic road crossing situations.

Nicholls, V., Jean-Charles, G., Lao, J., de Lissa, P., Caldara, R. and Miellet, S., 2019. Developing attentional control in naturalistic dynamic road crossing situations. Scientific Reports, 9, 4176.

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
PDF (OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE)
Nicholls2019.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

1MB

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-39737-7

Abstract

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 trafc videos containing a range of trafc densities with or without pedestrians. 5–10 year old (y/o) children showed less systematic gaze patterns. More specifcally, adults and 11–15y/o children look mainly at the vehicles’ appearing point, which is an optimal location to sample diagnostic information for the task. In contrast, 5–10y/os look more at socially relevant stimuli and attend to moving vehicles further down the trajectory when the trafc density is high. Critically, 5-10y/o children also make an increased number of crossing decisions compared to 11–15y/os and adults. Our fndings reveal a critical shift around 10y/o in attentional control and crossing decisions in a road crossing task.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:2045-2322
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:32045
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:13 Mar 2019 09:45
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 14:15

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

More statistics for this item...
Repository Staff Only -