2018_EJRNL_PP_PEDRO_F_S_RODRIGUES_1.pdf
Terbatas Lili Sawaludin Mulyadi
» ITB
Terbatas Lili Sawaludin Mulyadi
» ITB
Visual distraction is widely studied in children, particularly in visuospatial cognitive tasks. In these studies, targets and distractors are
usually shown in the same display (e.g., the computer screen).
However, children are constantly exposed to visually enriched
environments (e.g., elementary school classrooms), and little is
known about their influence on children’s cognition. Although
the importance of the surrounding environment is well recognized
in the literature, few experimental studies have explored this question. We propose an alternative paradigm to study visual distraction in children that brings together the rigor of experimental
psychology and more ecological validity on the exposure to potential environmental distractors. Our study was designed to investigate whether a high-load versus low-load visual surrounding
environment influences children’s cognitive performance as evaluated by four different cognitive tasks. A sample of 64 children (aged
8–12 years) completed two sessions in two environmental conditions: a high-load visual surrounding environment and a lowload environment. In each session, they performed visuospatial
attention and memory tasks. Overall, the results suggested that
the high-load visual environment affected children’s cognitive performance given that children performed better in the low-load
visual environment (e.g., higher percentage of hits, higher Corsi
span). Understanding the impact that a visually rich surrounding