Individual Differences in Mental Attentional Capacity Across Development: an Eye-tracking Study

Limitations and next steps

The primary limitation of this study is the small number and the unequal gender distribution of the children sample. One goal for future development of this research would be to recruit a larger developmental sample with wider age distribution.

We found no significant differences between performance of children and adults in terms of accuracy and M-scores. One reason for this unexpected result is that the children sample included gifted children who performed above their capacity. Adults int he current sample performed at the lowest range of normal performance found in adults, which could be caused by problems with motivation. Therefore enlarging the adult sample and increasing participant's motivation might increase the validity of the study.

Further goals of this study include exploring the possibility of making inferences about participants' encoding strategies and individual differences in mental attentional capacity from eye-tracking indices. Potential analyses in this line of enquiry will be to test for effect of individual performance (M-scores) on eye-tracking indices. Locating differences between eye-movements corresponding to retrieval and processing of relevant information versus encoding is another possibility, that could be explored by separating the trial period into pre and post-response periods and subsequent test for effect of period. The possibility of differentiating between contributions of inhibitory control and mental attention to performance will be explored through analysis of correlations between M-scores, accuracy and and pro/anti-saccade performance. Another eye tracking measure that was recorded during data collection was gaze trajectory, which may illuminate a number of things, including participants' levels of motivation. Analysis of gaze trajectory, coupled with post-experimental subjective report, may also provide further insight into participants' encoding strategies and correlate them with performance.

Conclusion

This research has numerous potential applications outside of fundamental science.

A commercial application would be to use the knowledge of how eye movements are related to mental attentional capacity and encoding strategies in software design, creating more intuitive and more optimal entertaining and educational applications for children of different ages. Similarly, in the sphere of public education, this research would provide an objective way to access cognitive load of various school assignments and tailor the curriculum to children's developmental changes. An exciting possible side effect of educational programs, informed by developmental research, could be the disappearance of the notorious “creativity and motivation killing” effect of current public school system education.

Combined eye tracking and mental attentional capacity measures also have the potential to provide a reliable, culture fair and simple alternative to current IQ measures. An advantage of these measures would be not only their increased sensitivity to developmental changes, but also their ability to differentiate between different factors in behavioural performance, such as motivation, effort and strategy use.

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