Viewing and attention in children

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Viewing and attention in children

C Lange-Klittner (c.langekuettner@londonmet.ac.uk; cJangekuet1ner@uni-bremen.de)\'2

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Correspondence

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The study of Cooper, Ullcr, Peliifcr and Stoic (1) showed (hat 4-~'car-old children's visual attention was supp0rLcd by watching all experimentally designed television clip, which had many different views onto a 'teacher' reading from a picture book. However, 6- to 7-year old:;' attcnlional system appeared 10 be more supported by fewer changes and longer durations of views on {he reading-aloud teacher.

This is n01 only of intcrest to paediatricians and parents well as children's television programme directors, but also a new and exciting research paradigma where 1wo tra- ditions within developmental psychology 11{lVC been linked, Le. viewing and attention. In my commcntary, i am describ- illg the background to children's viewing of multiple visual scenes with regard to attcntional load. I begin with a brief revicw of the earliest systematic research 011 view process··

ing in childrcn, the Three MOllntains task and continue with the possible and neuropsychological background behind view processing.

Children'S viewing of visual scenes was part of the Swiss psychologists Piagct's and Inhelder's research ⁰¹¹the devel·

opment of spatial reasoning (2). Their Three Mountains Task had become a well-researched paradigm in the] 9805 and is part of nearly every developmental psychology lext- book. Children were asked to decide from the four views of lhe Three iVlouniaills array. which would be (he onc of the

IlIniled cowmenfmy for Cooper NU er al. Conditioning attentional sldlls: e:w11Iinjl1f!, the elfecl.~ of the pace 0/ lelm.Jisioll editing 011 chil·

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figure I Three MountalllS Task.

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First publ. in: Acta Paediatrica 98 (2009), 10, pp. 1553-1555

Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-opus-108139

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experimenter, i.e. they were tested whether could iden- tify llle perspective of somebody else (Fig, 1).

Most children could do this only at about age nine, with lhe advcnt of operational thought (executive skills). Before, they would often select their OWll perspective instead. Now- adays, wc could call this pc)'scvcration, but then it was called egocentrism. Only at about age eleven did children show the same performance level as undergraduate students (3).

Earlier age thresholds could be found when geometrically regular blocks, rather natural like mOllntains with an irregular contour were used and it was revealed {hat also the overlap of the mountains was posing a difficult problem

«1), An information processing perspective was proposed very early by I~ossl'r {5} who sorted the tusk demands such as number of views and recog11ition vs. reproduction as response into some sort of a logical sequence. She staled with great foresight that 'when the task is beyond the repre- sentalional and conceptual abilities of the young child, they behave egocentrically either because the internal relation- ships arc most salient, or because they do not know what to do' (Hosser, 1983, p. 6(6). In other words, the own-view perspective is just the most familial', so they may fall back on whl.lt they know. Pcrscvcrative responses in (he most difficult task, requiring children to reconstruct the view from ready·nH\de object shapes, occulTcd in 56 % of the 4-year olds .• 18 o/() of the 6-year o!ds and still in 39 % of the 8-ycal' olds. i.e. nil these childrell were constructing their own view instead of the other's vie\\',

;\ recent study

or

myself (6) used a series of four views

or

spatial systcms into which children had to draw figurcs playing a ball game. Children initially do not draw views at all, but only single objects without a spatial context. I"knee, the ready-made views prcsupplemcntcd their objects with a surrounding. l'vlosi 7-year-old children were drawing Cl

habifual figure size and did not reduce size in perspective systems, but some benefited from the perceptual pull crc- atcd by gradually emerging depth in onc of the series without actually being aware of it. However, a random sequence

or

these views where depth would not gradually unfold did

n01 have the same cl'red ulllil2 years laicr. Hencc, the experience of multip!c vicws could have an impact on 7-year old$ when their sequence corresponded to the perceptual flow. This underpins the finding of Cooper et aL thai the experience of a higher amollnt of views had a beneficial effect on children's altcnLional skills.

So if the experience of multiple views is beneficial, why would children return to their own view when their information processing capacity was challenged in the Three iVlountains Task? Hcsponse persevel'ation is an importanl problem. and could be demonstrated nlready in infancy in another well-researched Piagetian spatial task. (he J\-not-B search (ask (7-10). Perseveration consists of a dysfunctional 'inhibition of return' which normally favours new locations and inhibits orienting towards visual locations that have been previously attended (l] ,12). Lange-Kiitlncr (9) sug- gested that this is a return to fhe familiar object still bound to its original place, a relation which would have needed

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dissociation before an objecl-new-placc unit could be con·

structed. However, individual object-place units lose their power as soon as multiple objects are bound into larger, common regions (13,14). Pcrscverntive responses in spatial (ash arc also a problem in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (15,16).

Perscrvcratio!1 because

or

limited aHentional resources can also occur in adult stroke paticnts with right hemi- sphere brain injury (17), They may show pcrsel'vcrativc errors in tasks such as line cancellation, \vherc in an array of lines, they have a tendency to rclul'l1 to und rc-mark tar"

gels that they had already cancelled (18,19), This pcrsevera ..

tion is oftcn coupled with a visual neglect, where Hems on the left can become entirely ignored, yet simuhancollsly ihcir presence leads to increased perseveration in the right visual field, especially when these objects wcrc similar to (he targets (20). The morc stimuli (competing choices), (ile higher the atlcntiollal load, the stronger the visual neglect (21,22). Furihermore, normal children when under pressure (23), and children with ADHD show similar behaviour (24).

This suggests that real or perceived aHentional load acti- vates an innate bias to the right side in visual attention (25).

The atienlional iasl, which Cooper et a!. used for testing (26) did in fact (cs! just this, orientation to the left or right spa(ial field, i.c. is the fish looking to the left or right side, and do I have to press the left or right button respectively to feed it?

Unlike in earlier POSJlCI' paradigms (27,28), where the spatiaJ cues wcre left and right io the target, in the Attcntion Network Test (ANT) the different sorts of spatial clIes were not really giving any hints about the left-right 'feeding' direction, as they were above and below cUC'S along a verti- cal axis. Hence, they were iust wHrning CllCS about the upcoming of the next trial to test alertness, nol tapping into the innate right-side bias, which emerges under pressure.

Yet, the most pronounced result in the Cooper Cl a!. study pertained to the variable 'orienting' which involved picking up a helpful spatial cue on wherc-to-look-next, with 4-year olds in the fast-changing views condition and the f)-year olds in the slow-changing views condition benefiting most in terms offastcr reaction times [i.e. negative values indicat- ing a gain; (l)1. In contrast, 'alerting' which involved \videl1- ing the visual field of the children by attracting their attention to the entire up-down expanse (double cue) was most helpful for 4-year olds who showed a gain in the fewer-views condition. The effect of congruent vs. incongru- ent fish spatial context did not vary in the two conditions.

In the Cooper et al. study, in the condition with more views, a new view appeared relatively regularly uftcr two complete sentences of the speaker. Hence, if one supposes that children cxerted morc foclIsed attention in this condition while a( the same time experiencing more spalial information aboul the ~ame object, this would correspond to the Three [vlollntains tasl< with onc object, but multiple views, a relatively optimal condition. Hence, the beneficial effect on cue pick-Up in tho youngest age group and increase of accuracy across age groups in the visual attention test thereafter is very plausible. In contrast, in lhl'

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fewer-views condition, children experienced long passages of read-aloud (ext, which would have drawn their attention and imagination to the actual storylinl', while the fewer views would have provided relatively less incentive to increase the alertness of the visual attention system.

Thal 6-year olds benefiled ()f where-In-look cues more in tll is condition was probably due 10 the effect that they would have had the umbition to do both, lining up tht' story and actively exploring the spatial context during the film, which would have been more conducive to do in (he 'slow' condition as the language flow of the picture book story appeared more continuous. A short memory lcsl at I he cnd of the session would make it possible to le;!

this idea ill an casy way.

III short, the Cooper et a!. studV surelv needs further

!'L~starch, the most urgent being that 'childl'c;) would need to be assessed on the ANT before and after the film interven- tion, so that an aUention baseline would be available. Chil- dren usually come into school with large individual differences in terms of reaction times, but standard devia- tions become smaller with age. However, given the many trials (24 practice trials and 48 experimental trials), wc can be reasonably confident that individual differences in baseline speed may have dissipated during learning, while the viewing experience was a valid and n.'liable treatment in lhe current study.

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