PARALLEL AND SERIAL ATTENTIONAL PROCESSES : A DEVELOPMENTAL ERP STUDY

We studied the development of attentional processes in parallel and serial visual search tasks. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for children (n = 40, age = 7–12 years) from 25 electrodes. Pop‐out paradigms were used in the 2 parallel processing tasks; the standard stimuli were small blue rectangles. In the color parallel task the pop‐out stimuli were small red rectangles. In the size task the targets were large blue squares. In the serial task the targets were a conjunction of features from the parallel tasks (i.e., large red squares). RTs varied with age and task. There were decreases in P3 latency with age, task, and an Age × Task interaction due to slower age‐related changes in the size compared to the color task. The data suggest that developmental changes in visual selective attention are tied more closely to the features of the target stimuli than to the parallel‐serial distinction, results consistent with the guided search model of attention.

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