Uncovering the mechanisms of real-world attentional control over the course of primary education

Turoman, Nora; Tivadar, Ruxandra I.; Retsa, Chrysa; Maillard, Anne M.; Scerif, Gaia; Matusz, Pawel J. (2020). Uncovering the mechanisms of real-world attentional control over the course of primary education (bioRxiv). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 10.1101/2020.10.20.342758

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Schooling may shape children’s abilities to control their attention, but it is unclear if this impact extends from control over visual objects to encompass multisensory objects, which are more typical of everyday environments. We compared children across three primary school grades (Swiss 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade) on their performance on a computer game-like audio-visual attentional control task, while recording their EEG. Behavioural markers of visual attentional control were present from 3rd grade (after 2 years of schooling), whereas multisensory attentional control was not detected in any group. However, multivariate whole-brain EEG analyses (‘electrical neuroimaging’) revealed stable patterns of brain activity that indexed both types of attentional control – visual control in all groups, and multisensory attentional control – from 3rd grade onwards. Our findings suggest that using multivariate EEG approaches can uncover otherwise undetectable mechanisms of attentional control over visual and multisensory objects and characterise how they differ at different educational stages.

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