Development of Visual Search Processes from Game Period to Preadolescence

One of the fundamental psychological processes is visual search. Studies that focus on this aspect of attention commonly use a visual search task. In this task, a target item in the display screen is presented to the participants between various distractors. Search difficulty can be manipulated by varying the number of distracters in the displays or varying similarity of the target and distracters. The aim of the present study is to examine the development of visual-spatial attention from the play period to the pre-adolescence using different visual search tasks (feature and conjunctive task). In the feature search, the target is the same with a set distractor in color and does not share any property with the other set distractor. In the conjunctive search, the target is the same in terms of color with one set of distractors and shape with the other set distractor. According to the results of the research, performance was particularly impaired on target-absent trials and with increasing numbers of distracters in conjunctive search. All age groups were affected by manipulations but age gradients were more pronounced in conjunctive search than in feature search. The results of both conjunctive and feature searches highlighted a development in visual search throughout childhood