By approximately 6 years of age, children can use time-based visual selection to ignore stationary stimuli, already in the visual field and prioritize the selection of newly arriving stimuli. This ability can be studied using preview search, a version of the visual search paradigm with an added temporal component, in which one set of distractors…

Visual attention in complex, dynamic scenes is attracted to locations that contain socially relevant features, such as faces, and to areas that are visually salient. Previous work suggests that there is a "global shift" over development such that observers increasingly attend to faces with age. However, no prior work has tested whether…

Experiences of contingent responsivity during shared book reading predict better learning outcomes. However, it is unclear whether contingent responsivity from a digital book could provide similar support for children. The effects on story recall and engagement interacting with a digital book that responded contingently on children's vocalizations…

Over the last 2 centuries there has been a rapid increase in the proportion of children who grow up in cities. However, relatively little work has explored in detail the physiological and cognitive pathways through which city life may affect early development. To assess this, we observed a cohort of infants growing up in diverse settings across…

Emerging evidence suggests interventions can improve childhood self-regulation. One intervention approach that has shown promise is Taekwondo martial arts instruction, though little is known about its acceptability among stakeholders or its mechanisms of effect. We extend evidence on Taekwondo interventions in three ways: (1) testing the efficacy…

Paying attention is a critical first step toward learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for…

Previous research has suggested that early development may be an optimal period to implement cognitive training interventions, particularly those relating to attention control, a basic ability that is essential for the development of other cognitive skills. In the present study, we administered gaze-contingent training (95 min across 2 weeks)…

Multitalker situations confront listeners with a plethora of competing auditory inputs, and hence require selective attention to relevant information, especially when the perceptual saliency of distracting inputs is high. This study augmented the classical forced-attention dichotic listening paradigm by adding an interaural intensity manipulation…

Reactions to stimuli that were shortly before presented as distractors are usually slowed down; this phenomenon is known as negative priming. Negative priming is an accepted index for tapping into selective control mechanisms. Although this effect is well established for adults, it has been claimed that children do not show negative priming.…

This study investigated differences in attention and learning among Guatemalan Mayan and European American children, ages 5-11 years, who were present but not addressed while their sibling was shown how to construct a novel toy. Each child waited with a distracter toy for her or his turn to make a different toy. Nonaddressed children from Mayan…

Examined in two studies the moderating effect of perceptual load on visual selective attention. Found that children's performance was as efficient as adults' under conditions of high but not low loads, suggesting that early selection engages rapidly maturing neural systems and late selection engages later-maturing systems. The onset of early…

A short-term cognitive mediation training intervention program designed to alter the social-cognitive basis for aggressive behavior of adolescent aggression offenders was found to increase social problem-solving skills, reduce endorsement of beliefs supporting aggression, and reduce aggressive, impulsive, and inflexible behavior. (RH)

Examined role of toddlers' attention deployment strategies in predicting 5-year-olds' delay-of-gratification strategies. Found that toddlers' use of effective attention deployment strategies to cope with separation from mother and with maternal behavior (controlling or noncontrolling) predicted effective delay-of-gratification strategies at age 5,…