I can see clearly now: the effects of age and perceptual load on inattentional blindness

Abstract

Attention and awareness are known to be linked (e.g., see Lavie et al., 2014, for a review). However the extent to which this link changes over development is not fully understood. Most research concerning the development of attention has investigated the effects of attention on distraction, visual search and spatial orienting, typically using reaction time measures which cannot directly support conclusions about conscious awareness. Here we used Lavie’s Load Theory of Attention and Cognitive Control to examine the development of attention effects on awareness. According to Load Theory, awareness levels are determined by the availability of attentional capacity. We hypothesized that attentional capacity develops with age, and consequently that awareness rates should increase with development due to the enhanced capacity. Thus we predicted that greater rates of inattentional blindness (IB) would be found at a younger age, and that lower levels of load will be sufficient to exhaust capacity and cause IB in children but not adults. We tested this hypothesis using an IB paradigm with adults and children aged 7–8, 9–10, 11–12 and 13 years old. Participants performed a line-length judgment task (indicating which arm of a cross is longer) and on the last trial were asked to report whether they noticed an unexpected task-irrelevant stimulus (a small square) in the display. Perceptual load was varied by changing the line-length difference (with a smaller difference in the conditions of higher load). The results supported our hypothesis: levels of awareness increased with age, and a moderate increase in the perceptual load of the task led to greater IB for children but not adults. These results extended across both peripheral and central presentations of the task stimuli. Overall, these findings establish the development of capacity for awareness and demonstrate the critical role of the perceptual load in the attended task.

Twenty years of load theory—Where are we now, and where should we go next?

“…This suggests that early selection may engage processes that mature earlier and regress later than late selection processes. Younger children have also been found to be more susceptible to inattentional blindness under low and moderate levels of load than are slightly older children (Remington, Cartwright-Finch, & Lavie, 2014).…”

The Effect of Visual Perceptual Load on Auditory Awareness in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…This is the standard way of assessing awareness on the critical trial in inattentional blindness/deafness paradigms (e.g. Simons and Chabris 1999;Memmert 2006;Remington et al 2014;CartwrightFinch and Lavie 2007;Macdonald and Lavie 2011). Participants responded verbally, giving details of the critical stimulus (i.e.…”

“…There have been a number of published studies that have manipulated the perceptual load of a single-element display (e.g. line discrimination) and demonstrated reduced distractor interference with increased perceptual load either behaviourally (Cartwright-Finch and Lavie 2007;Remington et al 2014;Macdonald and Lavie 2011;Swettenham et al 2014) or by reduced neural responses evoked by task-irrelevant information in high perceptual load single element displays (Schwartz et al 2005;Carmel et al 2011). Remington et al (2009), using a hybrid between a visual search task (Treisman and Gelade 1980) and a flanker task (Eriksen and Eriksen 1974), assessed the extent to which visual distractors were processed under different levels of visual perceptual load in a group of adults with ASD and neurotypical adults (matched for chronological age and IQ).…”

How to learn places without spatial concepts: Does the what-and-where reaction time system in children regulate learning during stimulus repetition?

“…Memory for places is a more complex task than memory for shapes and would have a higher cognitive load (Remington, Cartwright-Finch, & Lavie, 2014): Firstly, places may need to be aggregated into larger patterns, regions and zones (De Ribaupierre & Bailleux, 2000;Lange-Küttner, 2013;Logie & Pearson, 1997;Pickering, 2001;Uttal & Chiong, 2004). Secondly, even if places would be learned in the same way as shapes, the placeholders in the location test were more uniform and sparser than the actual shapes who had occupied that place during presentation.…”