Uncovering the mechanisms of real-world attentional control over the course of primary education

Abstract

Schooling may shape childrens abilities to control their attention, but it is unclear if this impact extends from control over visual objects to encompass multisensory objects, which are more typical of everyday environments. We compared children across three primary school grades ([country] 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade) on their performance on a game-like audio-visual attentional control task, while recording their EEG. Behavioral markers of visual attentional control were present from 3rd grade (after 2 years of schooling), whereas multisensory attentional control was not detected in any group. However, multivariate whole-brain EEG analyses ( electrical neuroimaging) revealed stable patterns of brain activity that indexed both types of attentional control - visual control in all groups, and multisensory attentional control from 3rd grade onwards. Multivariate EEG approaches can uncover otherwise undetectable mechanisms of attentional control over visual and multisensory objects and characterize how they differ at different educational stages. Lay AbstractWe measured how visual and audiovisual distractors differ in capturing the attention of 1st- to 5th-graders while recording the childrens brain activity. Brain activity results showed that all children were sensitive to visual distraction, and from 3rd grade onwards, children were also sensitive to audiovisual distraction. These results deepen our understanding of how school children control their attention in everyday environments, which are made up of information that stimulates multiple senses at a time.