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

TL;DR

The ability to split attention between non-contiguous locations emerges during middle childhood, as shown by comparing performance in children and adults.

Contribution

This study reveals the developmental timeline of multifocal spatial attention in children.

Findings

8-year-olds and adults showed better performance on valid trials, indicating multifocal attention.

6-year-olds performed similarly on invalid trials, suggesting a single focus of attention.

The ability to divide attention between non-contiguous locations develops during 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, participants were probed to report the identity of the digit that appeared in an uncued location either between the two cued locations or outside the two cued locations. We reasoned that if participants are able to divide their attention between the two non-contiguous cued locations, they should perform better on Valid compared with Invalid trials, and should perform equally on both types of Invalid trials. We found evidence for multifocal spatial attention in 8-year-olds and adults. However, 6-year-olds appeared to use a strategy consistent with a single focus of attention. Overall, these findings suggest that the ability to divide attention between noncontiguous locations develops during middle childhood.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13414-025-03182-8.

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