Development of salience-driven and visually-guided eye movement responses

Abstract

Development of visuospatial attention can be quantified from infancy onward using visually-guided eye movement responses. We investigated the interaction between eye movement response times and salience in target areas of visual stimuli over age in a cohort of typically developing children. A preferential looking (PL) paradigm consisting of stimuli with six different visual modalities (cartoons, contrast, form, local motion, color, global motion) was combined with the automated measurement of reflexive eye movements. Effective salience was defined as visual salience of each target area relative to its background. Three classes of PL stimuli were used: with high- (cartoon, contrast), intermediate- (local motion, form), and low-effective salience (global motion, color). Eye movement response times to the target areas of the six PL stimuli were nonverbally assessed in 220 children aged 1-12 years. The development of response times with age was influenced by effective salience: Response times to targets with high salience reached stable values earlier in development (around 4 years of age) than to targets with low salience (around 9 years of age). Intra-individual response time variability was highest for low-salient stimuli, and stabilized later (around 4 years) than for highly salient stimuli (2 years). The improvement of eye movement response times to visual modalities in PL stimuli occurred earlier in development for highly salient than for low-salient targets. The present age-dependent and salience-related results provide a quantitative and theoretical framework to assess the development of visuospatial attention, and of related visual processing capacities, in children from 1 year of age.

Processing speed in perceptual visual crowding

“…Here, in addition to letters, we also tested other visual processing features, such as contrast, color, spatial patterns, and shapes. We previously showed, in typically developing children, that the processing speed of different types of visual features depends, among others, on saliency of the stimulus and age (Kooiker et al, 2016). High salient stimuli, including colorful and high-contrast features, were seen fastest (;250 ms) and reached stable reaction times in children aged 3-4 years.…”

“…In the present study, we propose the central target to be the same as the peripheral target. In addition, previous studies have shown that timing of eye movements can be used as an objective measure to assess the quality and efficiency of perceptual visual functions in terms of processing speed (Mele & Federici, 2012;Kooiker, van der Steen, & Pel, 2016). In the present study, we designed a behavioral decision paradigm to test peripheral crowding using the timing of eye movements as an outcome measure.…”

Brain Damage and Visuospatial Impairments: Exploring Early Structure-Function Associations in Children Born Very Preterm

“…Cartoon: a movie of a colorful, high-contrast, slowly oscillating cartoon picture (reproduced with permission from Dick Bruna, Mercis BV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) with a visual angle of 4.5  9.0 (width  height) moving 1.5 up and down at 3 /s, against a black background. 20 Cartoons were shown 16 times per test sequence. 2.…”

“…Local Motion: a movie containing a black-and-white patterned square target, with a visual angle of 2.3 , against an equally patterned background, moving 2.5 to the left and to the right at 2.5 /s. 20 Motion stimuli were shown four times per test sequence.…”

Rules Infants Look By: Testing the Assumption of Transitivity in Visual Salience

“…While progress has been made in measuring the bottom-up determinants of attentional salience in adults and older children (Kooiker, van der Steen, & Pel, 2016), relatively little is known about the basic heuristics that determine visual salience in infancy. And, infants are arguably an easier population to study, as top-down control mechanisms in infants are relatively immature (see e.g., Amso, Haas, & Markant, 2014;Colombo, 2001).…”