Previous research has revealed marked improvements in cognitive control between the age of 10 years and adulthood. The aim of the current study was to explore differences in attentional control between adults and children within a natural context, namely whilst they were watching a magic trick. We measured participants’ eye movements whilst they watched a misdirection trick in which attentional misdirection was used to prevent observers from noticing a salient visual event. Half of our participants failed to detect this event even though it took place in full view. Children below the age of 10 were significantly less likely to notice the event than the adults and were also more reliably overtly misdirected (i.e., where they looked). Our results illustrate that within a more naturalistic context children are significantly more distracted than adults, and this distraction can have major implications on their visual awareness.
AçikA.SarwaryA.Schultze-KraftR.OnatS.KönigP. (2010). Developmental changes in natural viewing behavior: Bottom-up and top-down differences between children, young adults and older adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 1. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00207
2.
BarnhartA. S.GoldingerS. D. (2014). Blinded by magic: Eye-movements reveal the misdirection of attention. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01461
3.
BirminghamE.BischofW. F.KingstoneA. (2008). Social attention and real-world scenes: The roles of action, competition and social content. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(7), 986–998.
4.
BoothJ. R.BurmanD. D.MeyerJ. R.LeiZ.TrommerB. L.DavenportN. D.… MesulamM. M. (2003). Neural development of selective attention and response inhibition. Neuroimage, 20(2), 737–751. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00404-X
5.
BungeS. A.DudukovicN. M.ThomasonM. E.VaidyaC. J.GabrieliJ. D. E. (2002). Immature frontal lobe contributions to cognitive control in children. Neuron, 33(2), 301–311. doi: 10.1016/S0896-6273(01)00583-9
6.
ColeG. G.SkarrattP. A.KuhnG. (2016). Real person interaction in visual attention research. European Psychologist, 21(2), 141–149. doi:10.1027/1016-9040/a000243
7.
ColomboJ. (2001). The development of visual attention in infancy. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 337–367. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.337
8.
CorbettaM.ShulmanG. L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(3), 215–229.
9.
DesimoneR.DuncanJ. (1995). Neural mechanisms of selective visual attention. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 18, 193–222. doi:10.1146/annurev.ne.18.030195.001205
10.
DorothyB. R.PataiE. Z.DutaM.NobreA. C.ScerifG. (2017). The functional consequences of social distraction: Attention and memory for complex scenes. Cognition, 158, 215-223. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.015
11.
DurstonS.ThomasK. M.YangY.UluğA. M.ZimmermanR. D.CaseyB. J. (2002). A neural basis for the development of inhibitory control. Developmental Science, 5(4), F9–F16. doi: 10.1111/1467-7687.00235
12.
EnnsJ. T.BrodeurD. A. (1989). A developmental study of covert orienting to peripheral visual cues. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 48(2), 171–189. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(89)90001-5
13.
FarroniT.CsibraG.SimionG.JohnsonM. H. (2002). Eye contact detection in humans from birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99(14), 9602–9605.
14.
FedericoF.MarottaA.MartellaD.CasagrandeM. (2016). Development in attention functions and social processing: Evidence from the attention network test. British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
15.
FindlayJ. M.GilchristI. D. (2003). Active vision. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
16.
Fletcher-WatsonS.LeekamS. R.BensonV.FrankM. C.FindlayJ. M. (2009). Eye-movements reveal attention to social information in autism spectrum disorder. Neuropsychologia, 47, 248–257.
17.
FolkC. L.RemingtonR. W.JohnstonJ. C. (1992). Involuntary covert orienting is contingent on attentional control settings. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance, 18(4), 1030–1044.
18.
FreebodyS.KuhnG. (2016). Own-age biases in adults’ and children’s joint attention: Biased face prioritization. but not Gaze Following! The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1–9. doi:10.1080/17470218.2016.1247899
19.
FukushimaJ.HattaT.FukushimaK. (2000). Development of voluntary control of saccadic eye movements - I. Age-related changes in normal children. Brain & Development, 22(3), 173–180.
20.
HeloA.PannaschS.SirriL.RämäP. (2014). The maturation of eye movement behavior: Scene viewing characteristics in children and adults. Vision Research, 103, 83–91. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2014.08.006
21.
HendersonJ. M. (2003). Human gaze control during real-world scene perception. Trends in Cognitive Science, 7(11), 498–504.
KingstoneA.SmilekD.EastwoodJ. D. (2008). Cognitive ethology: A new approach for studying human cognition. British Journal of Psychology, 99, 317–340.
25.
KleinC.FoersterF. (2001). Development of prosaccade and antisaccade task performance in participants aged 6 to 26 years. Psychophysiology, 38(2), 179–189.
26.
KleinR. (1980). Does oculomotor readiness mediate cognitive control of visual attention? In NickersonR. S. (Eds.), Attention and performance VII (pp. 259–276). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
27.
KooikerM. J.van der SteenJ.PelJ. J. (2016). Development of salience-driven and visually-guided eye movement responses. Journal of Vision, 16(5), 18. doi:10.1167/16.5.18
28.
KramerA. F.HahnS.IrwinD. E.TheeuwesJ. (2000). Age differences in the control of looking behavior: Do you know where your eyes have been?Psychological Science, 11(3), 210–217. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00243
29.
KuhnG.CaffarattiH. A.TeszkaR.RensinkR. A. (2014). A psychologically-based taxonomy of misdirection. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 4. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01392
30.
KuhnG.FindlayJ. M. (2010). Misdirection, attention and awareness: Inattentional blindness reveals temporal relationship between eye movements and visual awareness. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63(1), 136–146. doi:10.1080/17470210902846757
31.
KuhnG.KourkoulouA.LeekamS. R. (2010). How magic changes our expectations about autism. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1487–1493. doi:10.1177/0956797610383435
32.
KuhnG.MartinezL. M. (2012). Misdirection - past, present, and the future. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2011.00172
33.
KuhnG.TatlerB. W. (2005). Magic and fixation: Now you Don’t see it, now you do. Perception, 34(9), 1155–1161. doi:10.1068/p3409bn1
34.
KuhnG.TatlerB. W. (2011). Misdirected by the gap: The relationship between inattentional blindness and attentional misdirection. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(2), 432–436. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.09.013
35.
KuhnG.TatlerB. W.ColeG. G. (2009). You look where I look! Effect of gaze cues on overt and covert attention in misdirection. Visual Cognition, 17(6), 925–944.
36.
KuhnG.TatlerB. W.FindlayJ. M.ColeG. G. (2008). Misdirection in magic: Implications for the relationship between eye gaze and attention. Visual Cognition, 16(2-3), 391–405.
37.
KuhnG.TeszkaR.TenawN.KingstoneA. (2016). Don’t be fooled! Attentional responses to social cues in a face-to-face and video magic trick reveals greater top-down control for overt than covert attention. Cognition, 146, 136–142. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.08.005
38.
KuhnG.TewsonL.MorpurgoL.FreebodyS. F.MusilA. S.LeekamS. R. (2011). Developmental changes in the control of saccadic eye movements in response to directional eye gaze and arrows. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(10), 1919–1929. doi:10.1080/17470218.2011.592592
39.
LandM. F.HayhoeM. (2001). In what ways do eye movements contribute to everyday activities?Vision Research, 41, 3559–3565.
40.
LeclercqV.SiéroffE. (2013). Development of endogenous orienting of attention in school-age children. Child Neuropsychology, 19(4), 400–419. doi:10.1080/09297049.2012.682568
41.
LunaB.VelanovaK.GeierC. F. (2008). Development of eye-movement control. Brain and Cognition, 68(3), 293–308. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2008.08.019
42.
MackA.RockI. (1998). Inattentional blindness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
43.
MemmertD. (2006). The effects of eye movements, age, and expertise on inattentional blindness. Consciousness and Cognition, 15(3), 620–627.
44.
MemmertD. (2010). The gap between inattentional blindness and attentional misdirection. Consciousness and Cognition, 19(4), 1097–1101. doi:10.1016/J.Concog.2010.01.001
45.
MunozD. P.BroughtonJ. R.GoldringJ. E.ArmstrongI. T. (1998). Age-related performance of human subjects on saccadic eye movement tasks. Experimental Brain Research, 121(4), 391–400.
46.
NeisserU. (Ed.). (1979). The control of information pickup in selective looking. Hillsdale, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
47.
PosnerM. I. (1980). Orienting of attention. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32, 3–25.
48.
ReingoldE. M.CharnessN.PomplunM.StampeD. M. (2001). Visual span in expert chess players: Evidence from eye movements. Psychological Science, 12(1), 48–55.
49.
RiskoE. F.LaidlawK. E.FreethM.FoulshamT.KingstoneA. (2012). Social attention with real versus reel stimuli: Toward an empirical approach to concerns about ecological validity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2012.00143
50.
RizzolattiG.RiggioL.DascolaI.UmiltaC. (1987). Reorienting attention across the horizontal and vertical meridians: Evidence in favor of a premotor theory of attention. Neuropsychologia, 25(1A), 31–40.
51.
SchulR.TownsendJ.StilesJ. (2003). The development of attentional orienting during the school-age years. Developmental Science, 6(3), 262–272. doi: 10.1111/1467-7687.00282
52.
SimonsD. J.ChabrisC. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28(9), 1059–1074.
53.
SmilekD.BirminghamE.CameronD.BischofW.KingstoneA. (2006). Cognitive ethology and exploring attention in real-world scenes. Brain Research, 1080, 101–119.
54.
SmithD. T.SchenkT. (2012). The premotor theory of attention: Time to move on?Neuropsychologia, 50(6), 1104–1114. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.01.025
55.
SmithT. J.LamontP.HendersonJ. M. (2012). The penny drops: Change blindness at fixation. Perception, 41(4), 489–492. doi:10.1068/p7092
56.
SmithT. J.LamontP.HendersonJ. M. (2013). Change blindness in a dynamic scene due to endogenous override of exogenous attentional cues. Perception, 42(8), 884–886. doi:10.1068/p7377
57.
YarbusA. L. (1967). Eye movements and vision. New York: Plenum.
58.
ZwickelJ.VoM. L. (2010). How the presence of persons biases eye movements. Psychonomic Bulleting & Review, 17(2), 257–262. doi:17/2/257 [pii]10.3758/PBR.17.2.257
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
