@article{ref1,
title="Attentional capture in goal-directed action during childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood",
journal="Journal of experimental child psychology",
year="2021",
author="Erb, Christopher D. and Moher, Jeff and Marcovitch, Stuart",
volume="214",
number="",
pages="e105273-e105273",
abstract="Attentional capture occurs when salient but task-irrelevant information disrupts our ability to respond to task-relevant information. Although attentional capture costs have been found to decrease between childhood and adulthood, it is currently unclear the extent to which such age-related changes reflect an improved ability to recover from attentional capture or to avoid attentional capture. In addition, recent research using hand-tracking techniques with adults indicates that attentional capture by a distractor can generate response activations corresponding to the distractor's location, consistent with action-centered models of attention. However, it is unknown whether attentional capture can also result in the capture of action in children and adolescents. Therefore, we presented 5-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 13- and 14-year-olds, and adults (N = 96) with a singleton search task in which participants responded by reaching to touch targets on a digital display. Consistent with action-centered models of attention, distractor effects were evident in each age group's movement trajectories. In contrast to movement trajectories, movement times revealed significant age-related reductions in the costs of attentional capture, suggesting that age-related improvements in attentional control may be driven in part by an enhanced ability to recover from-as opposed to avoid-attentional capture. Children's performance was also significantly affected by response repetition effects, indicating that children may be more susceptible to interference from a wider range of task-irrelevant factors than adults. In addition to presenting novel insights into the development of attention and action, these results highlight the benefits of incorporating hand-tracking techniques into developmental research.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0022-0965",
doi="10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105273",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105273"
}