Visual Processing Speeds in Children

Steve Croker,Frances A Maratos

doi:10.1155/2011/450178

Steve Croker, Frances A Maratos

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/450178

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate visual processing speeds in children. A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task with schematic faces as stimuli was given to ninety-nine 6–10-year-old children as well as a short form of the WISC-III. Participants were asked to determine whether a happy face stimulus was embedded in a stream of distracter stimuli. Presentation time was gradually reduced from 500 ms per stimulus to 100 ms per stimulus, in 50 ms steps. The data revealed that (i) RSVP speed increases with age, (ii) children aged 8 years and over can discriminate stimuli presented every 100 ms—the speed typically used with RSVP procedures in adult and adolescent populations, and (iii) RSVP speed is significantly correlated with digit span and object assembly. In consequence, the RSVP paradigm presented here is appropriate for use in further investigations of processes of temporal attention within this cohort.

Highlights

Human visual attention is limited in respect to both space and time
The aims of this study were to (i) ascertain whether children aged 6–10 years can reliably process rapidly presented visual stimuli at speeds similar to those found with adults and (ii) determine whether visual processing, as measured by the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task, is correlated with other measures of attention, memory, and global processing speed
There were two main findings: first, RSVP tasks in which stimuli are presented at a rate of one every 100 ms can be used with children aged 8 and above

Summary

Introduction

Human visual attention is limited in respect to both space (how many items can be attended to simultaneously) and time (how rapidly consecutive items can be processed) With regard to the former, it is known that spatial attention can be location based, object based, scene based, and/or a combination of the above (see Tipper and Weaver [1] for a review). Studies that investigate the time course of visual attention involve the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm in which one or two target items, embedded in a stream of distracter stimuli, must be identified These investigations have been successful in charting the timecourse of visual attention in adults [4, 5] and more recently in exploring a range of psychopathologies and developmental disorders in both adults and adolescents, such as schizophrenia [6], anxiety [7], and depression [8]

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