Hellen Kyler¹, Gabrielle Shimko¹, Karin James¹; ¹Indiana University

Multiple mechanisms may facilitate accurate visual object recognition, including visual perception skills, attention, and manual interactions with real 3D objects. Recent research on adults revealed that multisensory control of real 3D objects during encoding facilitated visual object recognition, relative to unisensory passive encoding, which consisted of a replayed 2D video of previous object interactions (Kyler & James, 2024). This multisensory active advantage on recognition has yet to be tested in children, nor related to more general visual perception or sustained attention ability. To further understand the processes involved in active learning, especially within an important developmental period of multisensory integration (Gori et al., 2008), we investigated the role of visual perception skills and sustained attention ability in predicting visual recognition of novel objects made of 3D geons. Eighty children aged 6-8-years-old explored 10 novel 3D objects in either a multisensory (visual-haptic) or unisensory (visual) exploratory condition, and were subsequently tested on a 2D old-new visual object recognition test. We also measured visual perception ability through the Berry VMI and sustained attention by the Kiddie Conner’s Continuous Performance Test. Results revealed that sustained attention (detectability) did not predict visual recognition scores, while higher visual perception abilities predicted both accuracy and d’, controlling for age and exploratory condition. Detectability predicted visual perception scores, which were inversely related. High visual perception abilities were specifically important for children in the unisensory visual exploration condition, suggesting an importance of visual skills for learning object structure via a computer screen. The finding that object learning was not impacted by children’s sustained attention demonstrates that even without active control, 3D, or multisensory object information, the visual only exploratory condition may not exhibit significantly more attentional demands. These results inform research on the development of active learning, visual attention, and memory following real world and computer tasks.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number T32HD007475.