Understanding visual attention in childhood: Insights from a new visual foraging task

A recently developed visual foraging task, involving multiple targets of different types, can provide a rich and dynamic picture of visual attention performance. We measured the foraging performance of 66 children aged 4–7 years, along with measures of two conceptually related constructs, self-regulation and verbal working memory. Our results show that foraging patterns of young children differ from adult patterns. Children have difficulty with foraging for two target types, not only when they are defined by a conjunction of features but, unlike adults, also when they forage simultaneously for two target types that are distinguished from distractors by a single feature. Importantly, such feature/conjunction differences between adults and children are not seen in more traditional single-target visual search tasks. Interestingly, the foraging patterns of the youngest children were slightly more adult-like than of the oldest ones, which may suggest that older children attempt to use strategies that they have not yet fully mastered. The older children were, however, able to complete more trials, during both feature and conjunction foraging. Self-regulation and verbal working memory did not seem to affect foraging strategies, but both were connected with faster and more efficient foraging. We propose that our visual foraging paradigm is a promising avenue for studying the development of visual cognitive abilities.