Staying and Returning dynamics of young children's attention.

In this paper, we decompose selective sustained attending behavior into components of continuous attention maintenance and attentional transitions and study how each of these components develops in young children. Our results in two experiments suggest that changes in children's ability to return attention to a target locus after distraction ("Returning") play a crucial role in the development of selective sustained attention between the ages of 3.5-6 years, perhaps to a greater extent than changes in the ability to continuously maintain attention on the target ("Staying"). We further distinguish Returning from the behavior of transitioning attention away from task (i.e., becoming distracted) and investigate the relative contributions of bottom-up and top-down factors on these different types of attentional transitions. Overall, these results (a) suggest the importance of understanding the cognitive process of transitioning attention for understanding selective sustained attention and its development, (b) provide an empirical paradigm within which to study this process, and (c) begin to characterize basic features of this process, namely its development and its relative dependence on top-down and bottom-up influences on attention. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Young children exhibited an endogenously ability, Returning, to preferentially transition attention to task-relevant information over task-irrelevant information. Selective sustained attention and its development were decomposed into Returning and Staying, or task-selective attention maintenance, using novel eye-tracking-based measures. Returning improved between the ages of 3.5-6 years, to a greater extent than Staying. Improvements in Returning supported improvements in selective sustained attention between these ages.

A Literature Review on the Effects of Exergames on Executive Function in Youth.

Exergames (video games that promote cognitive and physical activity simultaneously) benefit executive function in elderly populations. It has been suggested that exergames may induce larger effects than cognitive or exercise training alone, but few reviews have synthesized the causal factors of exergames on executive function from experimental research with youth. This review investigates (1) the various types of exergames and associated comparison conditions (2) the executive function outcome assessments commonly utilized in exergame research with youth (3) the efficacy of exergames by evaluating experimental studies that compared exergaming to cognitive, exercise, and passive control conditions inclusive of effect sizes and (4) the potential mechanisms underlying the changes in executive function induced from exergames. Eligible outcome data were available from 607 participants across ten studies, with the age of participants ranging from 4-21 (Mage=10.46). The findings indicate that exergames improve aspects of executive function from both acute and chronic studies. Despite the high variability of exergame contexts, dosage, populations, and outcome assessments, improvements in executive function comparing exergaming to passive control conditions were exhibited across all studies. While there is evidence of exergaming demonstrating advantages over passive control conditions, evidence is mixed when comparing exergaming to sedentary cognitive and exercise comparison conditions. Potential sources of these mixed results and future directions to address current gaps in the field are identified. As video game and technology use grows exponentially and concerns of childhood sedentary behavior and play deprivation increase, evidence-based practices that promote both physical and cognitive activity are needed.

Longitudinal investigation of executive function development employing task-based, teacher reports, and fNIRS multimethodology in 4- to 5-year-old children.

Increased focus on resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) and the use and accessibility of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) have advanced knowledge on the interconnected nature of neural substrates underlying executive function (EF) development in adults and clinical populations. Less is known about the relationship between rsFC and developmental changes in EF during preschool years in typically developing children, a gap the present study addresses employing task-based assessment, teacher reports, and fNIRS multimethodology. This preregistered study contributes to our understanding of the neural basis of EF development longitudinally with 41 children ages 4-5. Changes in prefrontal cortex (PFC) rsFC utilizing fNIRS, EF measured with a common task-based assessment (Day-Night task), and teacher reports of behavior (BRIEF-P) were monitored over multiple timepoints: Initial Assessment, 72 h follow-up, 1 Month Follow-up, and 4 Month Follow-up. Measures of rsFC were strongly correlated 72 h apart, providing evidence of high rsFC measurement reliability using fNIRS with preschool-aged children. PFC rsFC was positively correlated with performance on task-based and report-based EF assessments. Children's PFC functional connectivity at rest uniquely predicted later EF, controlling for verbal IQ, age, and sex. Functional connectivity at rest using fNIRS may potentially show the rapid changes in EF development in young children, not only neurophysiologically, but also as a correlate of task-based EF performance and ecologically-relevant teacher reports of EF in a classroom context.

Effect of Repeated Exposure to the Visual Environment on Young Children's Attention.

Prior research suggests that visual features of the classroom environment (e.g., charts and posters) are potential sources of distraction hindering children's ability to maintain attention to instructional activities and reducing learning gains in a laboratory classroom. However, prior research only examined short-term exposure to elements of classroom décor, and it remains unknown whether children habituate to the visual environment with repeated exposure. In study 1, we explored experimentally the possibility that children may habituate to the visual environment if the visual displays are static. We measured kindergarten children's patterns of attention allocation in a decorated classroom environment over a 2-week period and compared the percentage of time children spent off-task to a baseline condition in which the classroom environment was streamlined (i.e., charts, posters, and manipulatives were removed). The findings indicate that with more prolonged exposure to a static visual environment, partial habitation effects were observed: Attention to the environment declined at the end of the exposure period compared to the beginning of the study; however, the environment remained a significant source of off-task behavior even after 2 weeks of exposure. In study 2, we extend this work by conducting a longitudinal observation of six primary classrooms in which we measured children's patterns of attention allocation in real classrooms for 15 weeks to investigate whether increasing familiarity with the classroom décor would influence attention toward the visual environment. No evidence of habituation was observed in genuine classrooms in study 2. Potential implications for classroom design and future directions are discussed.

Research at a Distance: Replicating Semantic Differentiation Effects Using Remote Data Collection With Children Participants.

Remote data collection procedures can strengthen developmental science by addressing current limitations to in-person data collection and helping recruit more diverse and larger samples of participants. Thus, remote data collection opens an opportunity for more equitable and more replicable developmental science. However, it remains an open question whether remote data collection procedures with children participants produce results comparable to those obtained using in-person data collection. This knowledge is critical to integrate results across studies using different data collection procedures. We developed novel web-based versions of two tasks that have been used in prior work with 4-6-year-old children and recruited children who were participating in a virtual enrichment program. We report the first successful remote replication of two key experimental effects that speak to the emergence of structured semantic representations (N = 52) and their role in inferential reasoning (N = 40). We discuss the implications of these findings for using remote data collection with children participants, for maintaining research collaborations with community settings, and for strengthening methodological practices in developmental science.

The Emergence of Richly Organized Semantic Knowledge from Simple Statistics: A Synthetic Review.

As adults, we draw upon our ample knowledge about the world to support such vital cognitive feats as using language, reasoning, retrieving knowledge relevant to our current goals, planning for the future, adapting to unexpected events, and navigating through the environment. Our knowledge readily supports these feats because it is not merely a collection of stored facts, but rather functions as an organized, semantic network of concepts connected by meaningful relations. How do the relations that fundamentally organize semantic concepts emerge with development? Here, we cast a spotlight on a potentially powerful but often overlooked driver of semantic organization: Rich statistical regularities that are ubiquitous in both language and visual input. In this synthetic review, we show that a driving role for statistical regularities is convergently supported by evidence from diverse fields, including computational modeling, statistical learning, and semantic development. Finally, we identify a number of key avenues of future research into how statistical regularities may drive the development of semantic organization.

Keep it simple: streamlining book illustrations improves attention and comprehension in beginning readers.

This study used eye-tracking to examine whether extraneous illustration details-a common design in beginning reader storybooks-promote attentional competition and hinder learning. The study used a within-subject design with first- and second-grade children. Children (n = 60) read a story in a commercially available Standard condition and in a Streamlined condition, in which extraneous illustrations were removed while an eye-tracker recorded children's gaze shifts away from the text, fixations to extraneous illustrations, and fixations to relevant illustrations. Extraneous illustrations promoted attentional competition and hindered reading comprehension: children made more gaze shifts away from text in the Standard compared to the Streamlined condition, and reading comprehension was significantly higher in the Streamlined condition compared to the Standard condition. Importantly, fixations toward extraneous details accounted for the unique variance in reading comprehension controlling for reading proficiency and attending to relevant illustrations. Furthermore, a follow-up control experiment (n = 60) revealed that these effects did not solely stem from enhanced text saliency in the Streamlined condition and reproduced the finding of a negative relationship between fixations to extraneous details and reading comprehension. This study provides evidence that the design of reading materials can be optimized to promote literacy development in young children.

The Role of Co-Occurrence Statistics in Developing Semantic Knowledge.

The organization of our knowledge about the world into an interconnected network of concepts linked by relations profoundly impacts many facets of cognition, including attention, memory retrieval, reasoning, and learning. It is therefore crucial to understand how organized semantic representations are acquired. The present experiment investigated the contributions of readily observable environmental statistical regularities to semantic organization in childhood. Specifically, we investigated whether co-occurrence regularities with which entities or their labels more reliably occur together than with others (a) contribute to relations between concepts independently and (b) contribute to relations between concepts belonging to the same taxonomic category. Using child-directed speech corpora to estimate reliable co-occurrences between labels for familiar items, we constructed triads consisting of a target, a related distractor, and an unrelated distractor in which targets and related distractors consistently co-occurred (e.g., sock-foot), belonged to the same taxonomic category (e.g., sock-coat), or both (e.g., sock-shoe). We used an implicit, eye-gaze measure of relations between concepts based on the degree to which children (N = 72, age 4-7 years) looked at related versus unrelated distractors when asked to look for a target. The results indicated that co-occurrence both independently contributes to relations between concepts and contributes to relations between concepts belonging to the same taxonomic category. These findings suggest that sensitivity to the regularity with which different entities co-occur in children's environments shapes the organization of semantic knowledge during development. Implications for theoretical accounts and empirical investigations of semantic organization are discussed.

Lumping and splitting: Developmental changes in the structure of children's semantic networks.

Organized semantic representations encoding across- and within-domain distinctions are a hallmark of mature cognition, and understanding how they change with experience and learning is a key endeavor in developmental science. Existing computational modeling studies provide a mechanistic framework for understanding how structured semantic representations emerge as a result of development and learning. However, their predictions remain largely untested in young children, with the existing evidence providing only indirect tests of these predictions. Across two experiments, we provide the first direct examination of a key prediction derived from these computational models-that early in development, broad across-domain distinctions should generally be more strongly represented relative to finer-grained within-domain distinctions. The results support this hypothesis, being consistent with the exploitation of patterns of covariation among entities as a mechanism supporting the acquisition of structured semantic representations.

Experience-Driven Semantic Differentiation: Effects of a Naturalistic Experience on Within- and Across-Domain Differentiation in Children.

Organized semantic networks reflecting distinctions within and across domains of knowledge are critical for higher-level cognition. Thus, understanding how semantic structure changes with experience is a fundamental question in developmental science. This study probed changes in semantic structure in 4-6 year-old children (N = 29) as a result of participating in an enrichment program at a local botanical garden. This study presents the first direct evidence that (a) the accumulation of experience with items in a domain promoted increases in both within- and across-domain semantic differentiation, and that (b) this experience-driven semantic differentiation generalized to nonexperienced items. These findings have implications for understanding the role of experience in building semantic networks, and for conceptualizing the contribution of enrichment experiences to academic success.

A hidden Markov model for analyzing eye-tracking of moving objects : Case study in a sustained attention paradigm.

Eye-tracking provides an opportunity to generate and analyze high-density data relevant to understanding cognition. However, while events in the real world are often dynamic, eye-tracking paradigms are typically limited to assessing gaze toward static objects. In this study, we propose a generative framework, based on a hidden Markov model (HMM), for using eye-tracking data to analyze behavior in the context of multiple moving objects of interest. We apply this framework to analyze data from a recent visual object tracking task paradigm, TrackIt, for studying selective sustained attention in children. Within this paradigm, we present two validation experiments to show that the HMM provides a viable approach to studying eye-tracking data with moving stimuli, and to illustrate the benefits of the HMM approach over some more naive possible approaches. The first experiment utilizes a novel 'supervised' variant of TrackIt, while the second compares directly with judgments made by human coders using data from the original TrackIt task. Our results suggest that the HMM-based method provides a robust analysis of eye-tracking data with moving stimuli, both for adults and for children as young as 3.5-6 years old.

Selective sustained attention: a developmental foundation for cognition.

Higher-order cognition, particularly in real-life settings, often requires that parts of the sensory input be processed at the exclusion of others over a period of time. Consequently, this review focuses on the development of attention that is both selective (which entails processing parts of the sensory input at the exclusion of others) and sustained (which entails maintaining sensitivity to incoming stimuli for a period of time). Recent findings from four distinct areas of research reviewed here suggest that: (1) the underlying neural circuitry of selective sustained attention involves multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions; (2) selective sustained attention in infancy provides a developmental foundation for the emergence of executive function later in life; (3) suppression-based mechanisms of attentional selection that begin to emerge during the first year of life are important for memory and learning; and (4) selective sustained attention appears to be malleable through pre-natal and post-natal nutritional supplementation and interactions with mature social partners.

When Stronger Knowledge Slows You Down: Semantic Relatedness Predicts Children's Co-Activation of Related Items in a Visual Search Paradigm.

A large literature suggests that the organization of words in semantic memory, reflecting meaningful relations among words and the concepts to which they refer, supports many cognitive processes, including memory encoding and retrieval, word learning, and inferential reasoning. The co-activation of related items has been proposed as a mechanism by which semantic knowledge influences cognition, and contemporary accounts of semantic knowledge propose that this co-activation is graded-that it depends on how strongly related the items are in semantic memory. Prior research with adults yielded evidence supporting this prediction; however, there is currently no evidence of graded co-activation early in development. This study provides the first evidence that in children the co-activation of related items depends on their relational strength in semantic memory. Participants (N = 84, age range: 3-9 years) were asked to identify a target (e.g., bone) amid distractors. Children's responses were slowed down by the presence of a related distractor (e.g., puppy) relative to unrelated distractors (e.g., flower)-suggesting that children co-activated related items upon hearing the name of the target. Importantly, the degree of this co-activation was predicted by the strength of the target-distractor relation, such that distractors more strongly related to the targets slowed down children to a larger extent. These findings have important implications for understanding how organized semantic knowledge affects other cognitive processes across development.

Rapid, experience-related changes in the organization of children's semantic knowledge.

The organization of knowledge according to relations between concepts is crucially important for many cognitive processes, and its emergence during childhood is a key focus of cognitive development research. Prior evidence about the role of learning and experience in the development of knowledge organization primarily comes from studies investigating differences between preexisting, naturally occurring groups (e.g., children from rural vs. urban settings, children who own a pet vs. children who do not) and a handful of studies on the effects of researcher-developed educational interventions. However, we know little about whether knowledge organization can be relatively rapidly molded by shorter-term real-world learning experiences (e.g., on a timescale of days vs. years or months). The current study investigated whether naturalistic learning experiences can drive rapid measurable changes in knowledge organization in children by investigating the effects of a week-long zoo summer camp (compared with a control school-based camp) on the degree to which 4- to 9-year-old children's knowledge about animals was organized according to taxonomic relations. Although there were no differences in taxonomic organization between the zoo camp and the school-based camp at pretest, only children who participated in the zoo camp showed increases in taxonomic organization at posttest. Moreover, analyses of changes in taxonomic organization in zoo camp children suggested that these changes were primarily driven by improvements in the degree to which children differentiated between taxonomic categories. These findings provide novel evidence that naturalistic experiences can drive rapid changes in knowledge organization.

Getting ready to use control: Advances in the measurement of young children's use of proactive control.

A key developmental transition in executive function is in the temporal dynamics of its engagement: children shift from reactively calling to mind task-relevant information as needed, to being able to proactively maintain information across time in anticipation of upcoming demands. This transition is important for understanding individual differences and developmental changes in executive function; however, methods targeting its assessment are limited. We tested the possibility that Track-It, a paradigm developed to measure selective sustained attention, also indexes proactive control. In this task children must track a target shape as it moves unpredictably among moving distractors, and identify where it disappears, which may require proactively maintaining information about the target or goal. In two experiments (5-6 year-olds, Ns = 33, 64), children's performance on Track-It predicted proactive control across two established paradigms. These findings suggest Track-It measures proactive control in children. Theoretical possibilities regarding how proactive control and selective sustained attention may be related are also discussed.

Developmental changes in semantic knowledge organization.

Semantic knowledge is a crucial aspect of higher cognition. Theoretical accounts of semantic knowledge posit that relations between concepts provide organizational structure that converts information known about individual entities into an interconnected network in which concepts can be linked by many types of relations (e.g., taxonomic, thematic). The goal of the current research was to address several methodological shortcomings of prior studies on the development of semantic organization, by using a variant of the spatial arrangement method (SpAM) to collect graded judgments of relatedness for a set of entities that can be cross-classified into either taxonomic or thematic groups. In Experiment 1, we used the cross-classify SpAM (CC-SpAM) to obtain graded relatedness judgments and derive a representation of developmental changes in the organization of semantic knowledge. In Experiment 2, we validated the findings of Experiment 1 by using a more traditional pairwise similarity judgment paradigm. Across both experiments, we found that an early recognition of links between entities that are both taxonomically and thematically related preceded an increasing recognition of links based on a single type of relation. The utility of CC-SpAM for evaluating theoretical accounts of semantic development is discussed.

Conceptual influences on induction: A case for a late onset.

This research examines the mechanism of early induction, the development of induction, and the ways attentional and conceptual factors contribute to induction across development. Different theoretical views offer different answers to these questions. Six experiments with 4- and 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds and adults (N=208) test these competing theories by teaching categories for which category membership and perceptual similarity are in conflict, and varying orthogonally conceptual and attentional factors that may potentially affect inductive inference. The results suggest that early induction is similarity-based; conceptual information plays a negligible role in early induction, but its role increases gradually, with the 7-year-olds being a transitional group. And finally, there is substantial contribution of attention to the development of induction: only adults, but not children, could perform category-based induction without attentional support. Therefore, category-based induction exhibits protracted development, with attentional factors contributing early in development and conceptual factors contributing later in development. These results are discussed in relation to existing theories of development of inductive inference and broader theoretical views on cognitive development.

The influence of label co-occurrence and semantic similarity on children's inductive generalization.

Semantically-similar labels that co-occur in child-directed speech (e.g., bunny-rabbit) are more likely to promote inductive generalization in preschoolers than non-co-occurring labels (e.g., lamb-sheep). However, it remains unclear whether this effect stems from co-occurrence or other factors, and how co-occurrence contributes to generalization. To address these issues, preschoolers were exposed to a stream of semantically-similar labels that don't co-occur in natural language, but were arranged to co-occur in the experimental setting. In Experiment 1, children exposed to the co-occurring stream were more likely to make category-consistent inferences than children in two control conditions. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and provided evidence that co-occurrence training influenced generalization only when the trained labels were categorically-similar. These findings suggest that both co-occurrence information and semantic representations contribute to preschool-age children's inductive generalization. The findings are discussed in relation to the developmental accounts of inductive generalization.

Inductive generalization with familiar categories: developmental changes in children's reliance on perceptual similarity and kind information.

Inductive generalization is ubiquitous in human cognition; however, the factors underpinning this ability early in development remain contested. The present study was designed to (1) test the predictions of the naïve theory and a similarity-based account and (2) examine the mechanism by which labels promote induction. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-old children made inferences about highly familiar categories. The results were not fully consistent with either theoretical account. In contrast to the predictions of the naïve theory approach, the youngest children in the study did not ignore perceptually compelling lures in favor of category-match items; in contrast to the predictions of the similarity-based account, no group of participants favored perceptually compelling lures in the presence of dissimilar-looking category-match items. In Experiment 2 we investigated the mechanisms by which labels promote induction by examining the influence of different label types, namely category labels (e.g., the target and category-match both labeled as bird) and descriptor labels (e.g., the target and the perceptual lure both labeled as brown) on induction performance. In contrast to the predictions of the naïve theory approach, descriptor labels but not category labels affected induction in 3-year-old children. Consistent with the predictions of the similarity-based account, descriptor labels affected the performance of children in all age groups included in the study. The implications of these findings for the developmental account of induction are discussed.

Endogenously and exogenously driven selective sustained attention: Contributions to learning in kindergarten children.

Selective sustained attention is vital for higher order cognition. Although endogenous and exogenous factors influence selective sustained attention, assessment of the degree to which these factors influence performance and learning is often challenging. We report findings from the Track-It task, a paradigm that aims to assess the contribution of endogenous and exogenous factors to selective sustained attention within the same task. Behavioral accuracy and eye-tracking data on the Track-It task were correlated with performance on an explicit learning task. Behavioral accuracy and fixations to distractors during the Track-It task did not predict learning when exogenous factors supported selective sustained attention. In contrast, when endogenous factors supported selective sustained attention, fixations to distractors were negatively correlated with learning. Similarly, when endogenous factors supported selective sustained attention, higher behavioral accuracy was correlated with greater learning. These findings suggest that endogenously and exogenously driven selective sustained attention, as measured through different conditions of the Track-It task, may support different kinds of learning.