The ability to divide spatial attention across non-contiguous locations develops in middle childhood.

ABSTRACT: Adults can effectively divide visual attention across non-contiguous spatial locations. However, it is currently unknown whether the ability to deploy multifocal attention is a hallmark of human endogenous attention, or whether this ability develops with maturation of the neural areas that support deployment of attention across multiple locations. Across two experiments we investigated children's and adults' ability to split attention in an adaptation of Awh and Pashler's (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 26[2], 834-846, 2000) task. Participants were cued to attend to two non-contiguous spatial locations in an array of six locations. In Valid trials, participants were probed to report the identity of the digit that appeared briefly in one or both of the cued locations. In Invalid trials

SUBMITTER: Blankenship TL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12647209 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature