The effect of narrative coherence and visual salience on children’s and adults’ gaze while watching video

Jing, Mengguo; Kadooka, Kellan; Franchak, John M.; Kirkorian, Heather L.

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105562

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 51 publications

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“…Direct measures of gaze allocation would aid in determining the effects of low-level perceptual attention and high-level inference on the VAB, both for top-salience object and bottom-salience scene effects (Franchak & Kadooka, 2022; Jing et al, 2023). We note that caution should be taken when generalizing simplified, screen-based findings like ours to complex, real-world settings, particularly in developmental contexts (Kominsky et al, 2022), but that there is promise in the pattern of both our findings and prior VAB research that supports that adding realism to stimuli systematically increases the bias (Langley & McBeath, 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children and adults exhibit a common vertical attention bias for object tops and scene bottoms.

Langley,

Van Houghton,

McBeath

et al. 2023

Developmental Psychology

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Adults have a vertical attention bias (VAB) that directs their focus toward object tops and scene bottoms. This is consistent with focusing attention on the informative aspects and affordances of the environment, and generally favoring a downward gaze. The smaller size of children, combined with their relatively limited interactions with objects and scenes, could lead them to have diminished bias that only gradually develops. Alternatively, an early coupling of attention to action space could lead to VAB similar to adults. The current study investigates the developmental timeline of VAB, comparing 4-7-year-olds to adults. Participants (N = 50 children, 53 adults; 58% White, 22% Asian, 6% Black, 2% Native American, and 12% other) observed naturalistic photographic triptychs (48 objects, 52 scenes, all online). They made similarity judgments comparing a test figure to two flanking figures containing either the same top or same bottom. We found that (a) children and adults exhibit a common VAB for object tops and scene bottoms and (b) the adult bias is stronger than children's. Exploratory analyses revealed the same age trend within children, with VAB increasing with age, and asymptoting at the adult level at age 8. This demonstrates that despite age and body size differences that could make the environment for young children relatively disparate from adults, their perceptual system is already largely attuned to their individual interactive action space, with only minor continuing residual development. The findings support that, like adults, young children focus their attention on their action space and body level affordances, where they interact more with tops of objects and bottoms of scenes. Public Significance StatementThis study confirms that visual perceptual biases to favor attending to object tops and scene bottoms extend from adults to 4-7-year-olds children. The findings support that both groups attend more to their interactive space near their arms and legs, below eye height. This supports a common vertical attention bias coupled to a general downward vantage, largely independent of age, body size, and cognitive growth, which could help designers optimize learning environment layouts.

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